Double Take, by Petra. Word Entertainment, CD £14.99

PETRA had major personnel changes in 1997, so the trip down memory lane that led to DoubleTake could have been labelled 'Petra - New Plays Old'. Not that the American rockers had a particularly steady line-up in earlier days of their 25 year history - featured here for example is the 1985 album title track Beat The System, which predates even long serving vocalist John Schlitt (Greg X Volz preceded him), and other members arrived and departed before and after classics such as Beyond Belief, Dance, Praying Man and Just Reach Out were first recorded in the early 1990s.
The sleeve description of the ten remakes and two new songs is of "an acoustic 'live in the studio' unplugged sound": acoustic guitars are much in evidence, as are orchestral string arrangements. However, Petra haven't totally ditched their electrics and there's plenty of solid drumming in place to keep up their rock band credibility.
Despite this though, there are occasions when the music seems to run out of steam - with its slowed pace and slightly weird new vocal and instrumental harmonisation, Creed sounds much like an old gramophone winding down, and that's a big disappointment.
With few exceptions, the original versions were much better.

Peter Dilley

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