Album Review: Third Day ‘Miracle’

Third Day – Miracle

I have to be honest… This album made me smile.

This was the first Third Day album in a long time, that I think Third Day ‘brought it’ for a whole album… and boy did they ‘bring it’

For me Third Day,  for the last couple of albums had been a  ‘singles’ band… a band that released a great single, and an album filled with Third Day sounding songs that were all a clone copy of each other… however from the very start of this album it feels like Mac Powell and the gang have been given a new lease on life and have started to find new sounds.

The first track ‘Hit me Like a Bomb’ has the band singing ‘”Hear the sound of the sirens ringing/See the world of a life that’s changing
Well you hit me like a bomb” yep… these guy are starting to change too… and it sounds great… it’s melodic and it still rocks. Even the lyrics are more in your face than the band has brought for a while… “well you can drag me away kicking and screaming”…

You’ll find out pretty soon into the album that Third Day have been working at their new sound, and the big thing to come out of it was melodic non lyrical vocals… so lots of “Ohhh’s” and “Ahhh’s” but in a really cool southern way.

The album has got a much more main stream radio feel to it that other albums they have brought… and it’s a sign that Third Day is finally stepping up to the plate it seem to shy away from for a while.
The songs on this album sit somewhere between artist like Train, NEEDTOBREATHE, FUN and Matchbox 20… it’s pretty good.

It’s great to listen to an album and think… “wow that would work as a single”… and then you hear the next track and you think the same again.

Now I have to be honest… when I saw a Third Day album with another dreamy looking cover and cliche album title I thought “Here we go another Christian album with all lyric content and no music that would venture outside of the Christian world of youth groups and Christmas and Easter plays…”

or maybe I had just  resigned myself to thinking that it would be given the usual PowerPoint treatment within the first six month of it’s release in many churches across the world…

Even tracks with more heart felt titles like ‘Your Love is like a River’ or ‘You Are my Everything’  have a real edge and a  pop/rock sensibility without falling into the ‘Third Day sound’ rut of former albums.

The great thing about this album is right in the middle of it sits a track called ‘I need a miracle’… a collection of stories of people needing a miracle, people who found that there was a time in their life when they realised that they can’t do it all on their own… and “Need a Miracle”… no matter who they were or what they had done… it’s a great song that takes you on a journey and a nice focus for the rest of the album.

The album ends just as well as it starts… with tracks ‘For the rest of my life’ and ‘I want to believe in you’ with the latter even bringing the good old fashioned gospel backing vocals that lift the chorus to great heights.

The album finishes ironically with the most Third Day sounding song on the album with ‘Take me  back’… and you realise at this point… just how good they were, and just how much better they have got for this album.

This album is proof that good bands can actually still bring out great music and not rest on their laurels… sure they can still bring out carbon copy songs album after album… but I’m sure that they psalms talk about “singing a new song” and this is exactly what Third have done for this album.