I’m pretty new to the Steve Camp camp. This was the first album of his I’ve heard. It’s got that feel of reclaimed territory from the forces of lack, reassigned ground, which is something which has its own sound. It’s new (for it’s time it was new) and who knows what will spring from it?
“Upon This Rock” opens it up and it reminds me a lot of a Magnum song, like something from either Magnum’s “Chase The Dragon” or “Kingdom of Madness” but it’s about the church and it prevailing against all sorts. “It Is Good” has musical opening that reminds me of something from a Laurie Anderson song, one of the more joyous sorts of hers like Example #22 from Big Science but calm and not so whimsical. I noticed that “Love’s Not A Feeling” wasn’t such a popular track on iTunes at the writing of this. Reminds me a bit of an Icehouse song a little bit, I’m thinking “Love In Motion” perhaps, but with an organ. Again, more mellow than what I’m thinking of, and sounds a bit more 1970s ballad than Icehouse. There are even a couple of the tracks that have a feel a bit like Pendragon, like the title track “Fire and Ice”. I think about where Steve was getting his inspiration from, particularly in that song where he’s talking up giving up the things of the old life. But then again, as Larry Norman says “Why should the devil have all the good music?”. Steve lyrically has a conviction a lot like Keith Green, and on one of his other albums even does a version of Keith’s wakeup call, “Asleep in the Light”.
But the thing that keeps coming back to me is reclaimed territory, stuff the world has left for dead that God can use. This is the soundtrack for such things, and I’m glad to have the fresh sea breeze of the past as C.S. Lewis would put it, and know that the rushing wind of the Holy Spirit’s former works still blows through.