Review and MP3 Download: Hillsong Worship - OPEN HEAVEN / River Wild 2015 Album

Hillsong Worship's OPEN HEAVEN / River Wild official album art.

Hillsong Worship - OPEN HEAVEN / River Wild (2015) Deluxe Edition Download (92 MB)

In summary (all you may need to know about this album):

1. OPEN HEAVEN / River Wild is the 24th annual live worship album by Hillsong.

2. It is a live recording done between June and July this year (29 June to 3 July) during the Annual Hillsong Conference in Sydney, Australia; and it features all the Hillsong worship teams (Worship. UNITED & Y&F). 

3. It is the first album that Hillsong Church has recorded live at its Annual Conference in Sydney, Australia, and more than 25,000 people were in attendance. 

3. This album was released worldwide on October 16, 2015.

4.  It includes Hillsong's free Easter single released in March this year: O Praise the Name (Anástasis).

5. The Album Hit No. 1 On Australia's ARIA Album Chart  on the week of release and was touted "One Of The Best Worship Albums Of The Year" and "A Lyrical Masterpiece". (JFH)

Track listing
Below is the Deluxe Edition track listing (16 tracks).
Note that the standard edition only has the first 12 tracks in the same order.

01. O Praise The Name (Anastasis)
02. Love On The Line
03. One Thing
04. Open Heaven (River Wild)
05. Transfiguration
06. What A Saviour
07. Heart Like Heaven
08. Jesus I Need You
09. Here With You
10. In God We Trust
11. Faithfulness
12. Never Forsaken 13. Here Now (Madness) (ft. UNITED) 14. Rule (ft. UNITED) 15. This Is Living (ft. Y&F) 16. Medley: Pursue/All I Need Is You (ft. Y&F)

Music style and acceptability
Hillsong continues with their contemporary approach to worship music; using acoustics, drums, percussions and synths to move one from low pitches to high and overlapping sounds.
Unique to this album is the ability of having a good sync of backup vocalists coming in strongly to bring about a "duet kind-of sound" to every song.

Worship leaders from several Hillsong Church locations, such as Aryel Murphy from Hillsong Los Angeles, Chris Davenport from Hillsong New York, Tarryn Stokes from Hillsong Stockholm and Reuben Morgan from Hillsong London, were included in the recording.

You are able to get both a modern sound and a swing of the old Hillsong music style: near alternative, almost folk/pop but majorly contemporary. But as I mentioned in my review of Hillsong Worship's 2015 album "No Other Name" here, there are still no high tempo songs on this album. This  already seems to be a trend we can confidently predict. 

Besides having all this talent and gifting on the album, I still have a feeling that it would have been a bonus if Lecrae was invited to do his thing on "This Is Living" just as he had done it on the original track on the This Is Living EP. It would have given the album a wider audience and reception.

The album, as noted in the summary above, has been widely accepted by music fans across the globe. Gospel music enthusiasts and reviewers from The Christian Beat, New Release Today, Jesus Freak Hideout and Worship Leader have also agreed that OPEN HEAVEN / River Wild is a remarkable album.

Album art, album title and song titles
The waves that are the main view of the album art march well with the title and songs therein. In their blog (read it here: Art Behind OPEN HEAVEN / River Wild) Jay Argaet says, "I don’t know about you – but I love this title. I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit when I first heard the lyric “…open heaven crashing over me”. Creatively, I knew this artwork needed to visualise His spirit crashing towards us. There were a few preliminary failed attempts when first capturing this idea, but it was when we found inspiration in ocean waves that it started to come together. We first attempted to use photos from the coast of Sydney – however, when you think about the Holy Spirit crashing over me, I couldn’t help but  envision enormous waves not just small shore breaks. This is what led us to Shipstern’s Bluff in Tasmania – one of the biggest known breaks on earth, at times reaching 30ft... This wave exemplifies the Holy Spirit in my eyes – an untameable, unbreakable wave crashing towards us. It makes me think of Jesus’ heart towards a lost humanity – an unstoppable wave of grace, love, forgiveness, and acceptance rolling towards those who let Him in. Shooting the wave was no easy walk in the park – with the generous help of our Hillsong Hobart location, we shot the break from both boat and shore."

If you've read my review on tobyMac's ***THIS IS NOT A TEST***, you heard me mention that stylization seems to be "the in thing" today as far as album titles and artist names are concerned, thus in this spirit, Hillsong named this album OPEN HEAVEN / River Wild. It is not a bad thing, more so considering that Heaven (where greatness and salvation come from) is capitalized to imply this attribute...

The song titles and the content within are okay (according to me).

Audibility, singability, fluidity, quality and flow of music

The album generally has a smooth flow from song to song. Considering that almost all songs in the standard edition of the album are low tempo songs (way below 80BPM), transition from track to track is undisturbed. (Try listening to the album with a 5 seconds crossfade and you'll prove me right.)
The album is of good quality both soundwise and vocal-wise. All songs are singable in a congregation of people of all age groups. (But, again, this depends on a church's music style.)

Lyrical content

This album features songs written by a variety of Hillsong worship leaders including Reuben Morgan, Taya Smith, Marty Sampson, Joel Houston, Ben Fielding and others. 

"In Jesus... heaven opens, and in us He stirs a 'River Wild'... a passionate explosive love for God and for the humanity He created," explained Hillsong's Global Creative Director Cassandra Langton. "This is the premise of the album and our prayer is that these songs would ignite and stir within you a passion for God and a love for people."
I am sure that this album, together with the wonderful placement of words and Scripture within the songs, will minister to the global church.

Read the various song stories here;

1. Love on the Line Song Story

2. Transfiguration Song Story

3. Open Heaven (River Wild) Song Story

Read on the meaning of OPEN HEAVEN / River Wild here.

Conclusion

Fans of Hillsong will be as captivated as ever by the definitive sound of this live album. Lush keyboards, booming drums, ornate and driving guitars, passionate lead vocals, and the compelling landscape of several thousand voices in the conference crowd… all of this and more provides for a heartfelt album that worshippers and worship leaders around the world will draw from for years to come!" - LifeWay's WorshipLife,