Dove Award-nominated Irish worshippers and modern day psalmists Rend Collective released their fourth and 5-Star acclaimed album, The Art of Celebration, globally from Integrity Music on St. Patrick's Day. The album immediately soared to the top of retail charts internationally, becoming their biggest selling debut and spending time at No. 1 as the best-selling album of any genre at iTunes® and Amazon.com worldwide. With 18,433 albums sold, The Art of Celebration also hit No. 13 on the Top 200 and No. 1 on the Current Contemporary Christian Billboard retail charts, while simultaneously landing at No. 1 in the UK on the Christian/Gospel and No. 28 on the overall albums charts as reported by the UK's Official Chart Company. Remarkably, Rend Collective also has three albums in the Top 10 on Billboard's Praise & Worship chart this week, with The Art of Celebration at No. 1, Campfire at No. 7 and Homemade Worship by Handmade People at No. 10.
"This is truly a celebration of God's blessing on all of the energy that the band, together with our team here at Integrity, have put into bringing a new expression of worship through the exuberant experience of Rend Collective songs and music," says Integrity Music's Steve Nicolle, VP Sales and Marketing. "I have had the privilege of working alongside Rend Collective on their journey from the beginning, and we couldn't be more thrilled for this worship-focused team of musicians and songwriters."
For Rend Collective's new album, The Art of Celebration, the band made a recent theological breakthrough that is changing everything about their approach to music and life: seriousness is not a fruit of the spirit, but joy is. The appropriate response to the heightened understanding led to a sonically innovative message on The Art of Celebration. The band tells the story of the album on video below.
Along with the sales success, Rend Collective continues to climb the radio charts with the lead single from
The Art of Celebration,
"My Lighthouse." The song is No. 13 this week on Billboard's Hot AC Indicator Chart, while hitting No. 24 and ascending the National Audience Monitored Chart. Celebrating God's brightness in the midst of "troubled seas," the song will also be featured in a Bible Gateway devotional and is being featured now on Rend Collective's free devotional series on the YouVersion Bible app.
"My Lighthouse" is further the first video from the album that can be seen
here, with the lyric video for the song, plus 10 more lyric videos from the album, available to watch now at
http://bit.ly/taoclyricvids.
Rend Collective members lead acoustic performances of "My Lighthouse" and "Build Your Kingdom Here" on the set of Nashville's WSMV-TV's (NBC) "More at Midday" March 25.
Taking "My Lighthouse" and other new songs from
The Art of Celebration, along with raucous favorites from its 5-Star acclaimed albums,
Organic Family Hymnal, Homemade Worship by Handmade People and
Campfire, to audiences across the globe, Rend Collective has caught the attention of K-LOVE. This leading Christian music radio network with a weekly listenership of over 13 million people has announced that Rend Collective is up for "Best Live Show," along with such top touring artists as Switchfoot, NEEDTOBREATHE, Tobymac, Newsboys and For King & Country, during its second annual K-LOVE Fan Awards. The award show is set for Sunday, June 1, with voting opening on May 1 at
www.KLoveFanAwards.com.
Anyone who has experienced the controlled chaos and infectious wildness of a Rend Collective event will know that celebration and joy have always been at the core for these worship artists. Known for pushing artistic boundaries, daring the faithful to re-imagine worship and community, the band will continue its fresh, aesthetic call to worship on its current, 24-city tour in the U.S. with Kari Jobe that began Feb. 27 and runs through April 13.
Following the tour with Jobe, Rend will bring its "The Art of Celebration" tour home to Ireland in May along with a tour of the United Kingdom before returning to the U.S. in June. The band is also making plans now to headline a nationwide, 40-city U.S. tour this fall, slated to run Sept. 10 through Nov. 2. Special guests, cities and more will be announced later this year. (See below for current tour cities, and for all the latest tour updates, go to
http://rendcollective.com/tour/.)
The raw, rootsy, foot-stomping energy of the Irish worshippers has always been about people and building God's Kingdom here. Beginning as a group of friends collectively wondering how to make sense of the conundrum of life, God and community, Rend Collective is a nod to the places in Scripture where it says to "rend your hearts" and not your garments, a bold call to be genuine.
