In an oversaturated and jaded music industry, Ben Crist’s The Glorious Unseen embodies a refreshing take on the strength of song simplicity and heart felt authenticity. Produced by studio veterans Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd (Leeland, Jeremy Camp) Tonight the Stars Speak—slated for an October 23rd release—captures a beautifully expansive, room-filling ambience while maintaining the personal intimacy of Crist’s vocal delivery. Rounding-out Crist’s arrangements are studio performances by Cool Hand Luke’s Mark Nicks and Sixpence None the Richer’s Matt Slocum.

Born out of a yearning for spiritual connectedness with other like-minded Christians, Tonight the Stars Speak’s unfolds as a continuous prayer-like confession in response to personally turbulent times. “Many of the songs are inspired from feeling disconnected or burdened with something” Crist recalls after facing the pain of a division within his home church, “Some songs are more intimate and personal. But all of them are written directly to God.”

Before Tooth and Nail approached Crist, many of the songs on Tonight the Stars Speak existed within a church worship setting. Crist leads Anchor Fellowship in song as the music leader and has done so for four years. Consequently, there’s a band-cohesion to the feel of the collection that showcases performance maturity beyond studio cut and paste trickery.

And while Crist shows respect for contemporary worship bands such as David Crowder and the like, “In my mind, the intended audience is kids that listen to Underoath and As Cities Burn and all those bands,” he exclaimed. “I want to see this group of ‘scene’ kids really captured into worship and the presence of God. But also - I think that it has a place in Christian music [in general] today as well”.

Somewhat akin to Whole era Pedro the Lion or The Violet Burning’s ’91 classic, Strength, The Glorious Unseen seamlessly embodies the aural equivalent of deep, worshipful longing. Stylistically, a slight, reverent nod to shoegaze-like white noise—similar to early Starflyer 59 or Slowdive—blankets the arrangements in a warm, droning undercurrent. Each song drifts into the next as a complete experience rather than a traditional song-by song oriented collection. And while tracks “Tonight the Stars Speak” and “Hear Our Prayers” certainly stand out as strong singles in and of themselves, an inherent strength of Tonight the Stars Speak is its cohesive wholeness which will prove to lend itself to attaining a “classic release” status in years to come.

And while Crist is already making waves in the festival circuit and at home, members of the Tooth and Nail / Solid State roster had this to say: The Glorious Unseen is "one of the only worship bands I actually like" claims Tim McTague of Underoath. “This sounds amazing,” says Joshua Scogin of The Chariot “I have always loved what Ben is doing.” Matt MacDonald of The Classic Crime says “I’m putting this on my Ipod.”

In the last two summers The Glorious Unseen played the Cornerstone and Purple Door festivals to enthusiastic concert goers. In December of ’07 they plan to support headliners Underoath for a charity tour titled "Come and Live". “I hope that some other artists will catch the vision for this project and want to put events and tours together” Crist says, “we will play churches and colleges, but really I wanna get out there where the kids that are disillusioned with church are”.