Bringing Building 429 to life
Posted October 17, 2008
By Nathan,
Despite a dove award and being a popular artist in today’s contemporary music, Building 429 never took off as their singles often took a back seat to artists like Chris Tomlin, Casting Crowns, Jeremy Camp, and Aaron Shust. A few months before Building 429 self titled release is supposed to come out, the band put out Glory Defined: The Best of Building 429, with only three albums under their belt (which speaks to how some inane things management could do to hinder the band’s success). Instead of leaving the best of CD to be their lone work for the year, Building 429 worked to continue a career that this writter thought was over.
Despite what hard core fans might say even the best of Building 429’s songs were only pretty good (“glory defined”, “space in between us” and “I believe”) while some were just dry. The first song off their self titled project, “Not Gonna Let You Down”, draws from the energy well to create a fun pop medium worship rock which came from out of the blue from this normally mellow worship band. The up-tempo don’t stop there because the next two songs, "end of me” and “erase” both are medium rock tunes, while the music may not be diverse, it is for Building 429.
Songs like the ballad “bring me to life” represent the older sound that was dry but some clever echoes after the chorus gives a standard song “back to you” real life; it those small things like that give new life to Building 429 . “Shoulder” has a nice pop tune to go along with a refrain that makes no mistakes, plus the energy is a good fit for a song with some southern hints. Both “Your love goes on” and “overcome” have moments of real enthusiasm, the bridge of the former gets very fervent and the last chorus on the later is very animated. “Always, always” is a solid ballad which utilizes the violin well.
Not much has changed with the lyrics. “Shoulder” is similar to an earlier single “when no one else knows” but the prospective changes to a friend rather than from God’s point of view (‘And if you're on top of the world/And you fall down/You're shaking inside /And you can't find your ground/When you lose yourself, God will find you’). The tale of the prodigal son is retold in “home” while similar messages arise on the lyrically weak “bringing me to life” and “back to you” (‘I'm tired of the mess that I've become/I want to see the world the way you do/So bring me back to You’).
The tenses’ are a little odd on “Not Gonna Let You Down” (‘Please don't run from me now, ooo/I won't leave you… He is the hope that heals the world/We're almost home’) and “your love goes on” is a pretty shallow song. But some old, but good messages are solidly repackaged like "end of me” (‘And like an answer to a prayer/Jesus you were there/Calling me to live, to die/to give to gain/And I'll never be the same’) and “always, always” which deals with the pain and loses people endure; the answer ‘God knows our pain and His promise remains/He will be with you always’ is worth talking about.
Some may find the blend of medium rock and worship music a rough mix. But it does help because the song writing before was not enough to carry the songs and Building 429’s music was nothing close to cutting edge. It’s good to know that the self titled release isn’t the end of Building 429 and hopefully the musical advances will bring brighter days.
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