from: ccm magazine, April 2003
author: Andy Argyrakis
website: http://www.ccmmagazine.com

»» Adoration: The Worship Album

Everybody else is recording a worship album these days, so why shouldn't the Newsboys? However, by submitting to that trend, the band becomes a slave to the predictable and recycled elements of contemporary worship, unequivocally making Adoration the blandest project of its entire career. Cuts like "He Reigns" and "Hallelujah" operate under staggeringly unimaginative instrumental programming, while torpid renditions of "You Are My King (Amazing Love)" and "Father, Blessed Father" are extremely elementary and arid on all levels.
The live inclusion of past hit "It Is You" is merely a filler; and aside from the electric build up of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" and the breezy '80s dance shuffle "Praises (Take My Hands)," so is the rest of this project. If Thrive was a return to form that put the Newsboys back in the ballgame, consider Adoration the rushed strikeout that capitalizes on worship's fashionable state at the expense of artistic integrity.

--Andy Argyrakis ««