Darrell Mansfield Band – Revelation

Darrell Mansfield was one of the pioneers of Christian Rock starting out with his band Gentle Faith and later went solo, playing blues, ballads and rock and roll similar to Bad Company, applying his great voice and distorted flying harmonica solos to a great body of work. Darrell decided to get a bit more rowdy on this outing becoming more hard rock hinting at metal. To prove this point he borrowed Mr. Big/Racer X guitar virtuoso Paul Gilbert for a couple songs and put some cool artwork on the cover by famous artist Rick Griffin. Thunder and Lightning Starts off creating a swell of heavy blues based rock and roll with screams wailing like David Lee Roth meets Paul Rodgers, the drums are hammering and the guitar solo rocks and the song just makes you want to jump around. After the Storm and Jesus Will Reign are the 2 songs that incorporate Paul Gilbert’s guitar skills and they do not disappoint. Darrell is known for his blues harp playing even showing up on countless popular secular recordings but I believe ROD PIAZZA (The Mighty Flyers) plays harmonica on one song which means Darrell does plays harmonica on the other song on this album. Overall this is pure rock and roll evangelism with up front lyrics about being a full fledged Jesus freak with screaming guitars and good songwriting with lyrics like “Kick the Devil in the face, using God’s word” how can you not smile. My only con was the album was to short for me. I want more! Marty