Album of the week: Hillsong United

For a band that has been around nearly 20 years, Hillsong United has started to really get some attention lately. Formed in 1998 out of the youth ministry of Australia's massive Hillsong Church, the nine-member band dominated Christian music for much of 2013 and 2014 with the platinum-selling Oceans (Where Feet May Fail). Just last week, they won the award for top Christian artist at the Billboard Music Awards.

The nine-member group's newest album, Empires (**1/2 out of four), promises to continue the group's arena- and megachurch-headlining success with an expansive worship-music style that draws on alternative pop, grand-scale rock — even EDM.

Like Bob Dylan said so many years ago, you've gotta serve somebody, and much of Empires focuses on submission and service. It dwells in Christianity's paradoxes — losing one's life to save it, aligning with a heavenly kingdom while residing in an earthly one.

The message may be paramount to Hillsong United, but the melodies are almost as important. Like Coldplay, the group has mastered the engaging melody, and not just the ones that accompany the lyrics, but the ones in the soothing guitar patterns, the ostinato synthesizer lines, the simple piano motifs.

The group takes simple songs — sung by four vocalists, including Taya Smith, who took lead on Oceans— and pads them until they're lofty in scope. Not one song on Empires runs less than four minutes, and some run longer than eight or nine minutes.

Much of the appeal of Empires comes from the mood it creates. While the washes of reverb and synthesizers can threaten to bury gently murmured vocals in the mix, the effect is still soothing and reassuring. And if only the occasional lyrical phrases emerge from the sonic mist — "I touched the sky when my knees hit the ground" or "I'll follow your voice straight into the dark" — that's still enough to convey the message.

Download:Touch the Sky, Here Now (Madness),Even When It Hurts (Praise Song)