LOVEWAR - SOAK YOUR BRAIN (CD) Remastered. Includes Trading Card

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$ 266.00
$ 204.00
  • 2020 Girder Records (GR1076) Remastered
  • Includes Limited Edition Silver-Foil Trading Card #4
  • Soak Your Brain ranked 47/100 in the Heaven's Metal Top 100 Christian Rock Albums of All Time.
  • Produced by John and Dino Elefante
  • Originally released in 1993


Look out, this might become your favorite guilty pleasure album.

Tim Bushong, Greg Purlee and Rick Armstrong released Lovewar in 1993 on Pakaderm records.

It just might possibly be the world's most
underrated Christian rock album.

HM Magazine ranked this album at #47 on t he greatest Christian albums of all time. That should tell you something.

Yet, Lovewar was short-lived as Tim Bushong went on to form The Channel Surfers. Somehow John and Dino Elefante (Producers) saw something.  After all, their entire existence as producers and record label execs proved success as they had their finger of the pulse of what fans wanted.  From Petra, Guardian, The Brave and many others they found the IT factors and Lovewar was no exception.

Now on vinyl for the first time ever, as well as remastered CD. Vinyl comes in a purple translucent with 2-sided full-color printed sleeve with lyrics, write-up and more. The CD comes in a 8-panel jewel case with a limited edition silver foil trading card. Yep, those are making a comeback too!

Lovewar, back in the day was labeled as the Christian answer to Pearl Jam or Nirvana, as grunge was dominating music in the early 90's when this album dropped.  Thing is...Lovewar sounds NOTHING like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, or any of those grunge bands.  Not even remotely!  


Lovewar is a three piece melodic hard rock band very much in the vein of Extreme, with hints of Mr. Big, King's X, Galactic Cowboys, and eventual label-mates, Guardian, thrown into the mix.  Tight vocal harmonies, big, guitar hooks, intricate bass rhythms, and strong song crafting are the key elements of this band, with catchy melodies sticking in your head for days and insightful lyrics requiring a degree of thought. 


The truth is actually that this is Prog Metal and Guardian-like with big hooks and serious guitar chops. It's clean. It's fun. It's Prog Metal at it's finest with a great mix of metal, funk, jazz, grove and fusion with lots of starts, stops and time changes but with a little bit more flash and pop that on a King's X album. The guitars are crunchy and precise, the bass is dominant and THICK and almost worth the price of admission if not for the talent of the rest of the band. The drums are a great mix of jazz and funk, and the lead vocals and harmonies are very catchy. Overall the songs are very well put together tight and infectious.

Tim Bushong claims to have been influenced by popular writers like Francis Schaeffer and CS Lewis. No wonder lyrically, soak your brain displays more interest in apologetics (the defense of the doctrine) than do most records. 

 

 

Let's face it, there weren't a lot of bands doing the hard rock/funk fusion that Extreme, and to an extent Kings X and Galactic Cowboys did...and the excellent musicianship of these three men, Lovewar's Soak Your Brain is an album that you can turn on 20 years later and won't come across as dated because it is unique enough that it was never overdone or overplayed, so it sounds fresh every it's spun.  Lovewar was every bit as talented as their counterparts, both musically and vocally.  I think the Christian label may have hurt them as far as marketing goes, but even then, there is no chapter-and-verse Biblical quoting going on here, just strong, positive, uplifting lyrics about human relationships and social ideas.  You'll be proud to have this in your collection.

  1. Soak Your Brain
  2. Golden Rule
  3. Take Me
  4. Welling Up
  5. Space and Time
  6. You Win
  7. Keep Your Hands Off My Stuff
  8. In The Sea
  9. Just The Same
  10. You Are Not Alone

Customer Reviews

Based on 4 reviews
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R
ROBERTO

Excelente

R
Rebecca

Instant classic!

G
Geoff Buffalo
Love Lovewar

Bought this album recently because I liked the sample. Really have enjoyed it the last several days! It’ll stay in rotation on my player for some time, I can tell already. Love the lyrics, especially “Keep Your Hands Off My Stuff” and “Soak Your Brain”. Very well done, wish I’d known of this when I was youth pastoring in Kansas back in the ‘90s. Would’ve played it til my kids got sick of it, then played it louder!! Thanks Tim Bushong and Girder Music!

T
Tim Bushong
Songwriter's guilty pleasure as well...

While I don't listen to it very often, those rare times when I do "dust it off," and crank it up, reminds me of just how blessed we were to have everything come together in the right time, and with the right producers.

I have been producing/engineering albums for over 25 years now, and the lessons I learned while working with the Elefantes never wear out. Always happy to hear comparisons with those bands (although Monty from TGCB's thought there was too much Aerosmith to miss), and kind words regarding our lyrics.

Production notes:

We were originally going to record the album with a click track, but it became too difficult to do so on one particular song, which ironically was the #1 track on the demo which got us signed, and yet never made it on the album! It's now released on the self-titled "Lovewar" from 2019, but is 4/4 instead of the original cut-time. So there is just a tad of breathing to the album - which is better than the metronome anyway.

Lots of fun hanging out, too - met J and D's dear parents, enjoyed authentic Brooklyn-style Italian food, and almost came home with a vintage Fuzz Face. Also got to know JR and Lori McNeeley - wonderful godly people.

So glad this is now available in glorious analog vinyl - maybe I'll finally spring for a decent turntable...

Customer Reviews

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