Reviewed by Trevor Kirk

The Donnybrook Pentecostal Church, Cork City, Ireland, founded in 1996, with a congregation of 400 comprised of 20 nationalities, is reaching out to the lost in County Cork, with a particular heart for the poor, widowed and down trodden. The music ministry of this polyglot church is firmly in the black gospel tradition, and this generously filled CD (16 tracks, over an hour and a quarter of music) is almost exclusively the work of the music pastor Andrew Fynn - he's written all but one of the songs. However, if you're expecting a trademark church-wrecking performance with a big choir, a stomping band and a fervent atmosphere, please look elsewhere, because there are just nine singers in the Donnybrook Choir, plus Andrew, who also looks after keyboards and programming, the rest of the band being guitars, bass and drums. Despite the paucity of the personnel, the singers still try to sing up a storm on some tracks, but it's a bit of a struggle, and the slower songs tend to work better. That having been said, some of the songs suffer from repetition and the occasional weak and wobbly vocal, and I couldn't help speculating what might have happened had Andrew roped in the Donnybrook congregation to help out on this. I believe that a concert or worship setting with a good dollop of live recording passion would have made it much better - as it stands, this is really only fair to middling.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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