All In A Dream

It was an incredible 8 years since I bought the last Praise album, 'Lights Went Out'. Wow. Reading the post I made about it, I rambled on about how I didn't think much of it at first but then it got better with each play. And in the end I definitely loved it and listened to it in the years that followed quite a bit. Then the band released the 'Leave It All Behind' EP in 2016, which I said at the time was probably the best release of the year, and which is without doubt my favourite Praise record to date. And now 2022 has brought us a new LP, 'All In A Dream', released by Revelation.

The band started teasing artwork and snippets of songs quite a while ago when it first emerged I was surprised. After not hearing anything from the band for five years, I had assumed they were long gone. It was also a bit of a shock to see this appear on Rev, as all previous releases were on React!, but I assume that React! has also now closed shop, so the band was always going to need a new label.

As seems to be the case these days, the first press of this record consisted of three colours. The yellow was the most limited, and was only available via mailorder from Rev. 200 made.

There were then 300 copies made on blue, which were shared between Coretex, Generation and something called Project M. The Generation copies were numbered, but I missed out on those.

The third colour was this red one, which was also out of 300 copies and only available at independent record stores.

All of the coloured copies seemed to sell out quickly. I pre-ordered the yellow one and then spent too much time chasing the other two. But thankfully in the end I tracked them down with a little help from a friend. Sadly there are also 4 different limited sleeves, three of which are numbered out of only 10 each. It feels like I'm unlikely to ever get any of those three.

I'm still not entirely sure where I am at with this record. I have listened to it a lot over the past few weeks, and whilst I would definitely say that I enjoy it, it also feels like a disappointment after the last record. I was expecting something really 'next level' but sadly my expectations were not met. It's a good record for sure, but it just isn't quite the next Praise record that I was hoping for.