Pillar Releases New Album Today

Pillar releases their eighth studio album, Confessions, on Essential Records today.

You can purchase the album at Pillar’s online store, iTunes, Amazon or Cross on a Hill.

“Pillar continues to show that it’s an elite Christian rock band that holds no punches.” - CMSpin

“Pillar will continue to appeal to its fans, but with this new album they have redefined their place in Chrisitian rock.” - Norwich Bulletin

Tracklisting and song-by-song description after the jump:

1. Intro

2. Fire on the Inside
“When you pursue Christ, you do it out of a yearning to want to know Him more. You wake up in the morning wanting to read the Bible, wanting to learn, wanting Him to speak to you. You have this passion. … When Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, scripture says the Holy Spirit descended upon Him and filled Him. The Holy Spirit is a fire inside of you. God keeps us close to Him and gives us a desire to pursue Him by giving us the Holy Spirit.”

3. Whatever It Takes
“We added this song at the last second. I started writing it from the perspective of how I pursued my wife when I first met her. When you meet that someone in your life, you just outright pursue them with focused determination to win her heart. And then after you’ve been married for awhile, your wife starts questioning where that guy went. With that thought of doing whatever it would take to win their heart over – even if they said, ’No, I don’t want to be with you,’ or ’I want to break up,’ there was a resilience there. But that resilience pales in comparison to God’s pursuit of the human heart. He will do whatever it takes to get to you.”

4. Secrets and Regrets
“If this album had a title track, this would be it. This is a song about confessing your secrets. The thought was this: If you spend so much time hiding secret sins and covering up everything, you spend so much energy on that you don’t have time to have a relationship with God or relationships with the people in your life. It often becomes an extremely vicious cycle. The confessional cards kids filled out on our last tour showed this again and again. In one case, a kid was as young as 12 years old and had a pornography addiction. A lot of young people – and adults – spend so much time being consumed with this one thing that now there’s all this regret. Many start having suicidal thoughts, and hurting themselves [cutting]. And it all stems back to something you’re covering up and not being honest about.”

5. Better Off Now
“Looking back on my life, I remember the party days, and the drugs, and just the crazy times we used to have. You think you’re on top of the world when you’re in college. Nobody can tell you what to do – it’s fun. Nobody said sin isn’t fun, but it’s definitely destructive. Looking back now, now that I know that the living God lives inside of me, that He wants to use me to make a difference in this world, no matter how hard my life is, or what it is I’m going through, I know I’m better off now than I was before.”

6. Not Without a Fight
“I originally wrote this song for the naysayers out there. But when I heard the final version of it, it was God talking to me. It’s the first song of ours that ever moved me to tears. It hit me so hard, and it’s not really a tear-jerker kind of song. It’s what this song is about – I’m not going to give up on who I am called to be, or stop doing what I am called to do. I’m not going to be defeated. ’Not Without a Fight’ is more of a spiritual battle type of song. If you believe in something, if you feel it in your bones that this is what God’s called you to be, then don’t quit. Don’t stop fighting.”

7. Will You Be There
“Noah [Henson, Pillar’s guitarist] wrote the music and lyrics for the original chorus, and Rob Graves [producer] and I really liked it a lot. It’s one of those songs that goes both ways in terms of perception. It definitely can be perceived as asking a loved one or spouse, ’Hey, I messed up – will you still be there for me?’ But there’s also a lot of this theme on the Confessions album of questioning God. If we’re in the middle of life and we make a mistake, it’s like, ’God, I know you said that you’ll be there, and you’ll forgive me, but I’m a human, and I can’t fathom your forgiveness and your grace right now. Will you still really be there?’ I know there are people out there that are hurting, and they think they’ve done something so bad that God just can’t possibly be there for them anymore or that He was never there for them. The song started off there and it evolved into a very relationship driven song about mistakes and being committed to one another throughout life no matter what our shortcomings may be … that ’for better or worse’ type of song.”

8. Shine [Collective Soul cover]
“This was actually the first song that we knew we wanted to record for the album. Since Pillar’s formation, I’ve always had a list of songs going that would be fun to cover, and this was always one of them. Before we started pre-production on Confessions, we got a call from an A&R guy at our label, and he said, ’You guys should cover “Shine.”’ And I responded, ’That’s crazy. It’s already at the top of my list.’ That was my sign that we were supposed to cover this song. Since Noah’s such a great guitar player, it just works so well. We wanted to do something to showcase Noah’s talent and showcase our new rhythm section, and “Shine” is perfect for that.”

9. Call to Action [Copper cover]
“I’m so thankful to be part of a church [Life Church in Tulsa, OK] that knows how to be – the verb ’be’ – the church. It’s inspiring to be a part of it. I really want to see more churches become that. Some friends of mine wrote this song, and it struck me as literally a call to action – everybody that calls themselves a Christian, everybody involved in the church should actually be the church, and start taking steps to becoming who God has called us to be. And that means actively being involved and becoming a servant and doing the things that need to be done.”

10. Lose It All
“Noah had been working on the music for this awhile, and to me it was one of those really pretty, epic songs. The bottom line lyrically is: No matter how hard it is, no matter what it is you’re going through, or how bad the storm is, you’re still standing in the end. You can make it through whatever it is you’re going through. Another perspective you can see from the lyrics is that when you lose all of yourself, give up yourself for the pursuit of Christ, then you’re truly left standing victorious in the end. Losing yourself gives you more to gain.”

11. You Are Not the End
“Noah came up with the chorus on this one, and he summed it up well just saying, ’I’m not going to let this defeat me. I’m not going to let this be the end of who I’m called to be.’ There’s a lot of that on this record – spiritually and physically continuing down the path of who God’s called me to be.”