THE GREAT COMMISSION
Firework EP
[ANGR/Century Media]
Verdict: 5/10
RIYL: A DAY TO REMEMBER

The “world” of heavy music is a tricky thing. On one hand, if you never change or grow, you become stagnant and unimportant. If you go through said changes, you’ve “become soft” or a “sell-out”. It’s hard for bands to define these lines and still stay relevant. THE GREAT COMMISSION have been on all sides. With 2009′s And Every Knee Shall Bow they displayed what many called, “The Christian answer to THE ACACIA STRAIN”. In 2011 the band reinvented themselves and stayed heavy, albeit ‘bouncier’, and added the dreaded clean vocals to the mix with Heavy Worship. It wasn’t a bad change and showed a little maturity. The Firework EP however, will have haters champing at the bit to take shots at THE GREAT COMMISSION. It has 5 (very well done) acoustic renditions of songs off of Heavy Worship. While acoustic songs are very cool to hear from bands that are otherwise known to be heavy bruisers, sometimes it goes a little too far. All 5 track here seem to be from a whole other mind set and sound like they were written specifically to be poppy and radio friendly. In other words, they sound like THE GREAT COMMISSION took a page from A DAY TO REMEMBER’s hand book Guide To Success. Again, they aren’t bad, just…different. And still good. What ultimately keeps this from getting a higher score is that there’s really no imagination here and every song sounds the same, sadly. To top it off, they cover a KATY PERRY track, just like everyone else seems to be doing these days, and even it really lacks the TGC Punch. THE GREAT COMMISSION are a good band and they wanted to give their fans, and hopefully make a few new ones in the process, something different and cool. Did they succeed? Give Firework a spin or two and decide.        -by Jon Hole

Release date: May 22, 2012
In conclusion…Venturing down the road that has been very well traveled as of late, THE GREAT COMMISSION release a softer side to their Heavy Worship…