For everyone who wondered if they had seen the beginning of the end for Third Day, the band answers back with its best CD to date. From the opening track they proclaim "This is Who I Am."
"I’m the son of a good man, I’m the child of an angel," read the lyrics. "I’m the brother of a wild one, and I’m looking for direction, I’m the lover a beauty, I’m father of blessings, I’m the singer of a love song, but is that all I’m good for? This is who I am!"
There are those both inside and outside the Third Day fan camp who, if they're being honest, would label the group's first five years together as their rock period and the years that have transpired since that time as... well... their not-quite-so-rocking period. While any such hard-and-fast view is true only up to a point, those who bought the Chronology Volume One album, which traced the Atlanta-based outfit's musical arc from the 1996 self-titled debut to the Offerings live worship project in 2000, found more than a little evidence to support such a claim.
As unlikely as it might seem to more recent converts to the Third Day fold, time was when lead singer Mac Powell and his cohorts rocked more fiercely than just about any other artist on the Christian music charts. Indeed, newcomers whose only exposure to the group is through latter-day singles like "Cry Out to Jesus" and "Mountain of God" may be shocked to learn that the outfit's first few records were described as a cross between Lynyrd Skynyrd's down-and-dirty Southern hard rock and the arena-ready post-grunge of artists like Pearl Jam.