To understand what makes Rend Collective so unique and special among worship artists, you have to go back—way back. Some 1500 years ago, the Irish missionary St. Brendan sailed from the Irish coast without maps or any clue where he was headed. “The only thing he knew was that God had called him,” says bandleader and drummer Gareth Gilkeson. And so Brendan chose to “go”: a bold act of faith that not only echoes the album title As Family We Go, but also speaks volumes about the songs.

It also tells you a lot about Rend Collective, a Northern Irish band that has ventured from its native land at the beckoning of an invisible hand. And they’re doing it differently than most other artists before them, living and working—singing and sharing the laundry duties—as a tight-knit family. It’s just the foundation to foster faith and community through music, and forms the heart and strength behind their latest effort.

And my, how this musical family has grown. This young, freewheeling band has seen so much recent success: from opening for the likes of Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman and Kari Jobe, to landing Christian radio hits such as the revival hymn, “Build Your Kingdom Here.”

The next logical step, then, was to hunker down in their private studio and work at a brisk, breathtaking pace—cutting the eleven tracks on As Family We Go in two weeks. As Gilkeson puts it: “There wasn’t much time for sleep—just going for it.”

In this case, sleep deprivation yielded divine inspiration. Then again, how many bands brave a family pilgrimage the way Rend Collective does? Or proudly present themselves as examples of a self-styled genre, “celebration music”?

Though that describes the sound on the new disc—a joyful mélange of foot-stomping acoustic grooves and full-on pop pockets worthy of U2—it only hints at the spiritual thread that pulls everything together.

“We want to make music that is journey music,” says singer Chris Llewellyn. “We notice that sometimes music is seen as the end goal, that a worship encounter is having a music experience. But that’s not really it; it should be the soundtrack to mission: community living, the soundtrack to a meaningful worship experience.”

Soul Survivor does lots of things - we're a busy bunch! You might know of us because of our summer events, and although they are our main focus, there is other stuff we do too...

Each summer we run four events (three Soul Survivor events and one Momentum event) which last five days each and between them host around 30,000 young people. The rest of the year we keep busy with lots of other events such as retreat weekends, equipping days and Saturday celebrations (see 'other events'). Plus we run Soul Action in partnership with Tearfund to put God’s heart for justice into action.

I've been playing piano since I was 3 and singing since I was 6.
I've been composing piano music since I was 7.
I started song writing since September 2013.
The songs just come to me at the most unexpected times, mostly when I'm about to go to sleep! I'm looking to be the next female Danny Elfman!
Many more material to come, when my brain thinks of it XD

Enjoy.

LucyVictoria is following