NO DOUBT

[Boray]

I would rate No Doubt somewhere in the middle, above Double take, Revival, Come and Join us, Petra, Petra Praise 1 & 2.

[Mountain Man]

To be honest, the talk about stylistic consistency is a bit over my head.

By that I mean that apart from John's voice, there is little to distinguish the songs as coming from the same band. It's like different groups made a compilation album with John as the singer.

[executioner]

To be honest, the talk about stylistic consistency is a bit over my head.

By that I mean that apart from John's voice, there is little to distinguish the songs as coming from the same band. It's like different groups made a compilation album with John as the singer.

You know I really never thought about it that way, but I think you make a great point. I really don't think any of the songs go together or mix well.

[LivingRock]

I like it, simply because I like most any style of music. (with the exception of screamo... in my opinion it's not music at all ) Lyrical content is good (meaning it glorifies God, which is pretty important in my books ) so I don't mind the diverse sound. I won't call it my favorite Petra album, but it's very good.

[marco17]

No Doubt was one of the first Petra albums I bought. I remember at the time thinking that it didn't sound like a lot of the arena rock songs that had attracted me to them. That being said, I would agree with those who point out that it was a transition time for all bands in that type of genre, because the music scene was changing. Obviously, Petra was trying to explore something to try and stay viable in the market, and like many of their contemporaries, Christian and secular, they didn't necessarily succeed. I think many of the follow up albums were either an attempt to sound a bit more modern like God Fixation or to try and capitalize on the success of Petra Praise II, with Revival, and toss out the redone greatest hits thing with Double Take, that some many other artists seem to be doing in this day an age.

[tommye]

I like.nodoubt.about bob could have been on the covet.

[Mountain Man]

bob could have been on the covet.

Seeing how Bob remained Petra's studio guitarist, he really could have been

[rexreed]

Funny that lack of "flow" was mentioned when describing No Doubt. For me the last Petra album that had good flow in the Schlitt era was BB. UP and WUC were a little off for me. J&K flowed pretty good but the rest- well I never did memorize the order on those.

[bakersfieldpethead]

The only thing I didn't like about No Doubt was Bob left the band. He's heard on the album and is on the Think Twice Video but He wasn't on tour.

That being said......No Doubt ROCKED!!! You have to remember U2 was already out with their big ZooTV thing, Stone Temple Pilots and Nervana were eating up the charts with their stuff. It was all changing the music industry. It was time Petra made the change, it worked they survived the 90s, Louie said it best, they quit competing in the 90s and it worked.

As an extra point:
I'm surprised that everyone talks about "No Doubt", "God Fixation" and "Double Take" but they leave out a little album between "No Doubt" and "God Fixation" called "Petra Praise 2: We Need Jesus" if we're going to talk about the 90s we can't leave out that album, I remember the publicity they recieved for that album, they were all over the radio and magazines, Bob put's out "More Power to Ya" the book. So Petra was getting a level of success in the 90s or it could have been far worse. Remember in the 90s everything was still focused around the Radio, and who was around the Radio? Teen's who listend to U2, Stone Temple Pilots and Nervana. So if Petra wasn't moving in that direction they were not getting heard.

[Masada1]

I remember when I first got No Doubt I was a little off-put by it (though not nearly as much as I was going to be when I got God Fixation!). I think the thing that surprised me was the extreme difference to WUC...an album that I thought and still think was sonically amazing (I wish they had given BB another go at it). It just seemed to me that with the move going back to the Elefante brothers that they were almost painting by numbers...I REALLY didn't care for the obviously electronic drums sounds. I love John and Dino...and dug the sound their sound for a time...but by the time of No Doubt it just began to sound overly dated and overly produced.

Having said that...I really think there are some great songs on the album. At least half the songs on the album are VERY strong rocks songs: Enter In (again...the drum track really detracts from this song for me...but this song was amazing in a live setting), Think Twice (same deal as EI in terms of the drums...ugh), Heart of a Hero, Right Place and Two are Better than One are great tunes that are sometimes marred by the direction the producers chose to take them, IMOO...and TABTO features one of the coolest bass lines on any Petra song. Actually, after listening to this album again tonight...I have to say that the bass sonics are actually one of the highlights of this album...the bass lines are seriously moving around the fretboard and are very punchy!

Of course, ballads like No Doubt and We Hold Out Our Hearts are the typical bic lighter in the air Petra sing along.

It is obvious that they were still trying to figure out what direction musically they needed to go on this album...in that regard I don't think the Elefante brothers did them any favors on this album or the next couple that followed. The songs that I care for least on this album are the ones that stylistically straddle the line between the arena rock sound they were famous for and where they ended up. I do agree somewhat with Brent's comment about this being a great Schlitt solo record...except I think John's solo albums where actually a lot more creative than this album. I mean, I loved Unfit for Swine, both for its style, instrumentation and songwriting. That was very edgy for him and I thought the results were amazing. Ive always thought that Unfit, released by John in 96 was a more fitting direction for Petra than No Doubt, released in 95, but that's just my opinion. I think that if Petra had had a producer like Dann Huff the same songs on No Doubt would have sounded amazing and not gotten the bad rap that it did.

I am really eager to hear John's new album...I want to hear that voice rock it again!!