Psallos releases new album of congregational hymns

Christian music group Psallos has released a new full-length album called “A Sure Hope: Hymns of Romans” on all streaming platforms.

The new album is a theologically rich collection of congregational hymns designed for singing in a worship service. It covers themes of grace, living by faith and hope in the gospel and is composed to an indie-folk sound similar to the foot-stomp beat of The Oh Hellos and The Arcadian Wild.

Writer and composer Cody Curtis, Union’s assistant director of residence life, and his wife Melody formed Psallos in 2012. Since its beginning, Psallos has released four full-length records each centered on individual New Testament epistles, beginning with Psallos’ 2015 release, “Romans.”

The albums travel through each letter verse by verse and are written with the individual listener in mind as opposed to being sung by a congregation. This way, listeners can worship through the lyrics that resonated with them, Curtis said.

Unlike Psallos’ previous releases, Curtis wrote “A Sure Hope: Hymns of Romans” for congregational audiences in church services.

“My initial vision for Psallos from the beginning was that we would aid the church in contributing to worship music that the congregation could sing to,” Curtis said.

“A Sure Hope: Hymns of Romans” is the first of many companion albums that will be released parallel to the usual presentational epistle concept albums. This new release is the companion to the original Romans album. Curtis said his goal is to record a congregational companion record for all 21 epistle concept albums.

“It emerged from this idea of wanting to create theologically rich, artistically excellent music for the church,” Curtis said. “And from that, our mission grew a little bit.”

Psallos’ music is available at www.psallos.com.