Christian Review Magazine Issue 3 - March 2015 | Page 58

Inspire Church has 3 locations on Oahu, Hawaii,
one in manilla, Philippines, and church online

MUSIC
REVIEW

nspire Music was birthed out of
Inspire Church on the Hawaiian
island of Oahu. Mixing traditional
worship with upbeat dance and even rock,
Inspire Music have recorded ten of their
songs for their debut album simply
entitled, Inspire.

I
Artist:

INSPIRE MUSIC
Album:

INSPIRE
Rating:

Genre:

Dance Worship, Pop
Worship, CCM Worship
For Fans Of:

Hillsong Young & Free,
Hillsong United, Ian Yates,
Covenant Worship
Label:

Dream Records
Reviewed by:

Christian St John
Release Date:

Out Now

58 > CHRISTIAN REVIEW MAGAZINE

The album opens with the dance worship
track aptly titled “Dance Dance”, and right
away the Inspire worship team declares,
“We’re gonna dance, dance, dance. We’re
gonna love, love, love.” From this track, I
thought the entire album was going to be a
dance worship album in the vein of Hillsong
Young & Free. And while four of the ten
tracks come fully loaded with synth and
bass heavy dance beats, there are also six
tracks that would fall somewhere into
Hillsong United and even Chris Tomlin
territory.
Needless to say, Inspire is a bit of a mixed
bag. On the one hand you have some great
(and catchy) dance tunes featuring some
excellent vocals and interesting melodies,
whilst on the other hand you have several

guitar driven tracks, and even a couple of
power ballads.
I do like it when worship teams mix things
up, especially live. But I can’t help but think
the Inspire team might have been better
off releasing two separate EP’s, as not
everyone likes dance and vice versa.
As it stands, I like Inspire. It has some great
melodies, Christ-centered lyrics, and the
music is solid and well played. However,
because of the diversity of the music the
band employs, it did feel a little disjointed
at times. Don’t get me wrong, the dance
tracks are well played and produced, as are
the rest of the songs. It’s just they are are
two vastly different music styles that very
rarely mix well. And because of this, Inspire
simply ended up sounding like a various
artist mix rather than one band playing all
the songs.
With all that said, I will still give the album 4
stars, as I would have given 4 stars to each
of the two EP’s had Inspire Music decided
to release the songs that way.