{"id":40975,"date":"2008-06-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/seeds-of-change\/"},"modified":"2008-06-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-25T00:00:00","slug":"seeds-of-change","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/seeds-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeds Of Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kerry Livgren’s first solo effort after a nearly a decade with his highly successful band Kansas<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> marked his conversion to Christianity. The powerful outpouring of newfound faith at first comes off a little bit ham-handed, but the album is solidly performed and Livgren gathered up a great group of musicians to help out, including fellow Kansans Steve Walsh and Robbie Steinhardt and metal howler Ronnie James Dio, among others.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a nice mix of songs on this disc: \u201cJust One Way\u201d and \u201cHow Can You Live\u201d are straightforward, up-tempo praise songs, while \u201cWhiskey Seed\u201d has an old time revival feel to it, complete with woeful gospel choir and a message of temperance. Livgren does a rare lead vocal on this one. <\/p>\n

For me (please humor this old metalhead), the two tracks featuring Dio are the highlight. \u201cTo Live For The King\u201d is a pure devotional song, as its title implies; it\u2019s powerful vocal performance as always by Ronnie. Meanwhile, \u201cMask Of The great Deceiver\u201d is a rumbling, dark track, a perfect vehicle for Dio. The beauty of this collaboration is the juxtaposing nature of Dio’s image and reputation. At the time, he was the singer for Black Sabbath, and his work with Sabbath and his previous band Rainbow had strong elements of the occult and some pretty dark stuff. Kerry initially chose him for his voice alone, but has said he had fun with the idea of a guy with Ronnie\u2019s reputation singing Christian lyrics.<\/p>\n

Besides being a solid set of classic rock, Livgren’s testimony and faith were a powerful pill for the world of Christian music back in its day. Christian rock was a small, almost non-existent niche at the time and tended as it still does towards middle-of-the-road light rock. Livgren\u2019s compositions are largely classic rock arena-style blasters, full of big hooks and choruses. A joyful noise indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":29404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8227],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-40975","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kerry-livgren","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40975"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}