Review of the new CD by Susan Bailey of Grapevine Magazine

Critical Mass has broken with their own tradition of releasing albums
every three years or so and, to the delight of their fans, come out with
an energetic live album known as Celebrate.

Celebrate contains a good mix of familiar praise and worship tunes along
with some of the groups biggest hits. Each song sounds fresh with that
unique Critical Mass edge that makes them so popular.

Favorites include Open the Eyes, Cry the Gospel, Awesome God and Trading
My Sorrows. I am not normally a fan of cover songs because so few artists
put their own signature on such songs, but Critical Mass does.

For example, Open the Eyes starts out rather slowly but then suddenly rips
open with a driving force. And then, just as quickly, at the end, slows
down again. Its quite effective.

A very pleasant surprise was the complete reworking of two of their most
popular songs, Completely and the acoustic World Youth Day 2002 song,
Share it with the World, which now really rocks out!

If the groups goal in putting out Celebrate was to show listeners what
their live concerts are like (and to entice them to come see), they have
succeeded. The sound is great and theres a real feeling of electricity in
the air.

My one criticism? The packaging. I would have preferred a much more
colorful, eye-catching cover. The color blue to me denotes peace, not the
fire of the Holy Spirit. My first thought was, Why wasnt this cover red?
There are also typos on the traycard. [Note from Dave Wang- the typos
have been fixed!]  A careful re-working of the artwork
would make this project nearly perfect.

But dont let that keep you from experiencing Celebrate. Its the next best
thing being there!