Casting Crowns opens "Door" to new songs

By Deborah Evans Price

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - Most artists can't wait to give up their day job when they get a record deal. But Casting Crowns frontman Mark Hall isn't your typical artist, and Casting Crowns doesn't operate like the typical platinum-selling act.

As the band prepares for the August 28 release of "The Altar and the Door" and a fall tour, Hall still works at Eagle's Landing First Baptist Church in Atlanta as a youth pastor. The others also have key church roles. Thus the group tours only Thursday through Saturday to make sure the band is present for Sunday and Wednesday church services.

"Everybody is still doing what they were doing, and I think we're even more involved than we were," Hall said. "It can be demanding, but it's what God has called us to do."

Dividing time among family, church and a burgeoning music career hasn't hurt the momentum of Casting Crowns, which has quickly become Christian music's top-selling act. Since the band's self-titled debut bowed in September 2003 on Beach Street/Reunion Records, the set has sold 1.4 million units in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The group's sophomore effort, "Lifesong," has shifted 950,000.

Hall is known for penning songs that not only encourage church members but also challenge them to examine how they live their lives as Christians. He does so again on "The Altar and the Door."

"The name of the record is the key to the whole thing," Hall said of how the faith and conviction Christians feel in church often dissipates in the real world. "We want to live for God. We want to please him with what we do and worship him with the way we live, but when we get out there in the world, it's like sometimes we kind of forget what we believe about things. When we get to the altar, everything makes sense and everything is black and white."

That struggle to hold fast to one's beliefs against the pressures of society is a recurrent theme on new songs like "Slow Fade" and "Somewhere in the Middle." Hall was inspired to address such issues after he and his pastor spent an afternoon on MySpace looking at some of the things kids in their youth group were posting. Some were bold about their faith while others wrote things that contradicted their Christian beliefs.

"It's a slippery slope," Hall said. "You have to guard your heart and walk with the Lord every day."

Reuters/Billboard