Bellarive stretches and expands the worship band label

Many artistic Christian musicians race to escape the “Christian” title as soon as possible, hoping for more crossover impact. Bellarive, on the other hand, readily embraces the even narrower descriptor of “worship band.” Lead singer Sean Curran explains that “the best and defining quality of a worship song is that it is sung directly to God. … Worship songs are prayers,” according to an interview with WorshippingTogether.com.

In that sense, Bellarive definitely fits the bill. But on its newest release, Before There Was, Bellarive also stretches and expands the category, describing itself with the term “atmospheric worship music.” An interesting combination of Rich Mullins and U2, Bellarive infuses familiar pop-rock song structures with a sense of epic sweep appropriate to themes of creation and redemption. Stacked vocals and subtle layers of choice electronic sampling help conjure a sense of otherworldliness that pleasantly hovers around the music’s periphery.

The album opens with “Let There Be Light,” a wink to that grandest of all openings—God’s creation of the universe. The song starts out on an appropriately celebratory note. After a preparatory drum roll and fanfare, like opening the way for some dignitary, the song drops off to a dulcimer sound pinging away like a bell setting the stage. Finally the chorus rolls in announcing, “Let there be light let there be love / living in freedom / Let there be grace like rivers run / to the ocean.”

The most compelling song on the album is “Lazarus,” which begins with a lonely note repeated eerily on the piano. Soon the song breaks into a strong blues beat while a distorted guitar bites and crunches around the edges. The result is a fitting, almost macabre environment to consider Lazarus’—and our own—hopeless situation: “out of breath, a permanent condition / taken by the night / This bone and flesh could never find a reason / To breathe in again.”

The idea is that people are dead men walking, until that fateful day when He sends forth the call that carries the same potency which birthed life at the very beginning. When Curran launches the soaring, reverb-drenched chorus alongside a majestic guitar and a rhythm that stirs the bones, it feels verily like a call the wakens the dead: “Come out / Come out from your hiding / Just as you are / Come out from the dark.”

A pair of hymns on the album’s latter half demonstrates the band’s wonderful range and variety. “Hallelujah, To Saving Grace” is a joyous little marvel that uses a quiet-but-tasty Rhodes organ to provide color to Curran’s traditional sentiments: “How am I to stand / Before you my king / With merit not my own / Blood I did not bleed?” On the other end of the spectrum, a funky, club-style groove animates Curran’s proclamation that “Only You Can Raise The Dead.”

Bellarive shows respect for roots and tradition while demonstrating complete command of modern music sensibilities with all its gadgets and tools. The band specializes in creating wide, open spaces and a sense of possibility. Not every song can bear the ambitious weight placed on it, but over all they succeed in pointing to the big sky kingdom of God’s world—a world quite broken but also abounding in the echoes of His original mirth. A world caught up in His redemptive drama, purposed in eternity past Before There Was.