Now that almost everyone has left or is currently hammering furiously on the keyboard with an anti-Christian lash, I’ll proceed.

As with most post-rock, the seven longer songs (5-9 minutes) that comprise In Abstraction are full of delicate acoustic lulls and crescendos of hefty lurching riffs, but with A Hope For Home, it’s all glossed with a tangible (at least to Christians I imagine) sense of upward looking grace and truly emotional heft. And overall the songwriting, dynamics and depth of the material has improved greatly from a so-so Christian band to a truly evocative post-rock group that simply happen to be Christian.

This is evident immediately with opener “Calm” and second track “Out of Ruin, Misery”, two of the more striking tracks in the genre I’ve heard in quite some time — regardless of faith.  “Calm” gets right to it with an impressive Isis-ian lope and bellow that shows that the band has added a little oomph to their sound from The Everlasting Man. The delicate bridge about 1:45 in is simply gorgeous and its brief clean vocal section is perfectly placed and implemented. “Out of Ruin, Misery” has a similarly stunning moment about 5:05 in that’s just a killer rumbling riff and transition to a more elegant clean section.

That song bleeds into “Firewind”, a more expected softer track that starts a four song trek into the more introspective. The beautiful elements in the more  hymnal quartet of “Tides” and “The House Where You Were Born” and “Weave” transcend into much more personal and peaceful realms — with only the occasional mountainous bursts. It’s all admittedly a bit of a lull, but wrought with emotion. The the 9-minute epic closure, “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, ends the album with the same brilliant mix of clarity and heft as the opening two tracks. It actually starts with a rending somber acoustic section that could be lifted from a Mono track, before the song explodes into a melancholic metallic post-rock eruption that is truly captivating and comes across as a moving, heartfelt plea to the listener.

The three more ‘metal’ tracks alone make this worth while, and the added tracks of more delicate atmospheric shimmery moments just add a little grace to the proceedings. If these guys weren’t Christian, they would be having the same reception as Iron Thrones did a couple of years ago. To me they put off the same dynamic and hues. Highly recommended for the more open minded metal fans who enjoyed last year’s Junius CD, but who are in need of a little more positive balance in their listening habits.

With a musical backbone that tangibly culls from Misery Signals, Life In Your Way and the last Inked In Blood album, as well as more commercial acts like Time in Malta and various Victory Records emo bands, The Everlasting Man (A concept based off of G.K. Chesterton’s novel of the same name) is a deep concept album that echoes with elegance and beauty, but is a little thin on originality and heft, meaning not too many ‘metal’ fans will get into it. I actually had a hard time getting into it, but not because of the music; it’s very well done, heartfelt and melodic, but those clean vocals just ruin it for me.

Take away the emo vocals, and you actually have a pretty enjoyable album of shimmering, grace filled, conceptually religious metalcore that’s a perfect fir for the overall concept. However, add the clean vocals and it suddenly becomes more wimpy and emo, loosing any positives the music had. Now don’t get me wrong -I enjoy well done clean vocals, especially in this kind of music as they tend to fit the passionate, praiseful, conventions of the music (i.e Life In Your Way, Kingston Falls), but if they are even just a bit ‘off’ or winging-I shut down, no matter how much I like the music-just ask The Devil Wears Prada.

Which is a shame, because on the whole tracks like “Iniquity: An Offering”, “Babylon: The Insatiable Thirst”, “Masada: The Spiritual Staircase”, the more ambient “Restoration: The Return From Exile” and “Redemption: Grief Observed”, when delivered with the standard metalcore/ hardcore shout, are actually pretty solid examples of melodic, soaring, heartfelt metalcore. However, folks that can tolerate the clean vocals could do no worse than this elegant and honest release, I just prefer my Christian metal to have just a little bit more of an edge.