Glory Revealed II: The Word of God in Worship

In 2007, David Nasser wrote Glory Revealed: How the Invisible God Makes Himself Known in conjunction with a compilation album called Glory Revealed: The Word of God in Worship.  Last year a follow-up album, aptly titled Glory Revealed II, was released, produced by Mac Powell of Third Day.  I listened to excerpts from both albums and recently bought the second one, because, basically, I thought it was awesome.

And after listening to it almost exclusively for a week or two, I still do.  The overall concept of the album lyrically is songs based on, quoting, and occasionally entirely composed of Scripture, which makes it an extremely inspiring and encouraging set of tunes as well as being a great Bible memory aid.

The musical concept is what I guess is being called "Americana," which appears to meanacoustic music with  Southern Appalachian country, bluegrass, and folk influences that features guitar, mandolin, banjo, and fiddle and at times sounds vaguely like Jay Ungar's soundtrack to Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War.  At one extreme is a track like "Never," based on Heb. 13:5-6, that's basically contemporary worship music with a hint of "Americana" influence, but at the other is "There Is a City" (Rev. 21:19-23; 22:1-5, 17) that sounds like it came right out of a 19th-century frontier campmeeting.

For this second album at least, a core band assembled at a remote farm and lodge in southern Georgia (the liner notes repeatedly say it belongs to "the Foxworthys"—as in Jeff Foxworthy???) to write the songs and lay down the instrumentals and some vocals.  Then most of the lead vocals got farmed out to a variety of CCM luminaries who recorded their parts hither and yon (i.e., Nashville).

Not a country music fan?  Neither am I, but I can't stop listening to this somewhat country-ish stuff.  And many of the tracks lead my thoughts to praising the Lord no matter what I'm doing at the time.  Take a listen yourself.