Third Day: Time (1999)

Tracks:

1. I've Always Loved You
2. Believe
3. Took My Place
4. Never Bow Down
5. Your Love Oh Lord 
6. Don't Say Goodbye
7. What Good
8. Can't Take the Pain
9. Sky Falls Down
10. Give

After the wrong turn down Grunge Street, Third Day needed a course correction.   So they hit the highway and met up with producer Monroe Jones, who took the boys down to Southern Tracks Studios in Atlanta to start recording their third album.  Rather than try to fix what had been running smoothly, Jones and the band went back to where they started, reloading the Fixible Peach Bus and riding the Southern gravy train of gospel rock.  But rather than remake Third Day, the band worked out a new batch of songs in the old mold, just with a little more hot sauce.

The resulting record, Time, is a return to the basics, made by a band with nothing to prove or conquer, but rather, being themselves, playing the style that best suits them, and writing more mature and intelligent songs in that style.  There's still gospel throw-downs like "Believe," a challenge to doubters to have faith in what God has done in their lives, and "What Good," a funky number that asks the age-old question, "What good is it a man to gain the whole world, and to forfeit his soul?"  But there's a sensitive and emotional side to the music that is coming to the surface.  The lead-off track, "I've Always Loved You," is a country-flavored, first-person Jesus ballad in the vein of "Love Song."  Mac takes a more laid-back approach on this one, to an acoustic-led track with pedal steel guitar and multiple Macs singing backup.  It's a sign that the band is starting to move in a new direction, one that is focused on more rootsy elements and Nashville-like arrangements.  

The real new direction is in what was the big radio hit off of the album, "Your Love Oh Lord," a worship song based on Psalm 36.  To a strangely mechanical beat, Mac sings one verse and chorus over three times, again with the acoustic backing and minimal arrangement.  The song became a concert staple for years and heralded the next phase of their career as the hardest-rocking worship band on the planet.

Other highlights include "Never Bow Down," a powerful song based on the biblical story of the three exiled believers in the fiery furnace; "Sky Falls Down," a sort of End Times Dixieland-ish rocker with horns and sly vocals; and the ballads "Don't Say Goodbye" and "I Can't Take the Pain," which show the band starting to bring a personal angle to their music.  They also close the record with the eight-minute "Give," another slow worship number like "Your Love", except they drag it out with a long coda that features almost a minute of feedback before going back into a driving finale.  It's a good song, but the band would find a better setting for it in the live show.  Long ambient worship numbers are not the TD strong suit.  

Like its somewhat generic title, Time is a quiet return to the basic Third Day approach of Southern rock with a strong gospel message, but with a little sweetness and humility thrown in to take the edge off.  It almost has a feeling of a long exhalation after the tension and weirdness of Conspiracy.  Things are coming back to where they should be, but that doesn't mean the band will stop moving forward and developing their sound and message.  But sometimes you gotta go back home before you go out to take on the world.