Every once and awhile, you just need to get away. While searching for an excuse to escape the day-to-day, my wife and I discovered a Bleach show featuring John Reuben approximately 5 hours north of our location in Pennsylvania in a relatively remote town called Canandaigua in upstate New York. The plans developed swiftly and before we knew it, we were in a NY church lobby chatting with Reuben and a few members of Bleach.

With Bleach planning to disband this coming August, it make each live show this year from the band extra meaningful. Bleach has been trucking along for eight years now and they've had the privelege of reaching countless lives in the name of Jesus. Their presence in Christian music will be sorely missed. The show was held at the Crosswinds Wesleyan Church in an intimately sized room perfect for a rock show. The night was started by Canadian natives OneCross, a high-energy Christian rock band with a fairly usual sound and a rather unusual stage presence. Lead vocalist Shawn Cavallo took front and center, perched at his drumset facing towards the audience's left. Framing either side of him were the remaining members who never stopped jumping and thrashing about (or,in some cases, even twitching). It seemed harder to connect with the band with their lead vocalist sitting and singing while drumming, and watching the other members working extra hard in attempting to compensate for having a drumming vocalist. Musically, the act was rather tight, but unoriginal. Their brand of hardcore-influenced rock isn't anything new with artists like Justifide, P.O.D., and PAX217 all already doing the same thing.

Following a stage change, Ohio-bred John Reuben was up next. Now I've seen John live several times in the past year or so and this was the first time I was blessed with the chance to see him accompanied by a full band as a driving force to support his fun, infectious take on today's hip-hop.