With over 25 years of Christian music history to their credit, award-winning band GLAD releases their 23rd career album, entitled Pure & Holy Passion. Maintaining the group’s well-known harmonies, which have sold over 1.5 million records to date, Pure & Holy Passion releases from Spirit-Led Records through Provident Music Distribution on July 9, 2002.

Pure & Holy Passion is GLAD’s first full-band release in seven years, and features their trademark vocals set against contemporary guitar-driven tracks. The project includes familiar modern worship classics, including “Let Everything That Has Breath,” and the group’s signature cut, “Be Ye Glad,” as well as an 11-minute live bonus cut of the concert favorite, “The History of A Capella Music.”

Lead vocalist Ed Nalle says, “We have been reinventing ourselves every few years for our whole career. We’ve done progressive rock, pop-rock, several unusual styles of A cappella music, and jazz-influenced pop. Our music was keyboard based for many years, and on Pure & Holy Passion, our guitarist Chris Davis, gets a chance to use his gifts to the fullest. We’ve also taken a more vertical direction with a worship album, and I hope what we are offering is mature modern worship music. God has taken us through many seasons of life, extensive travels in this country and the third world, a child born with a defective heart, [band member] John’s cancer, and the chemo and radiation that went with it. We are thankful to Him to put our experience and whatever wisdom God graciously give us into our music.”

Pure & Holy Passion will be introductory priced at $13.99, and a special “Worship Minutes” CD will be distributed to retailers for individual as well as in-store use, and to radio stations for use as PSAs. The "Worship Minutes" CD will include each of the songs on Pure & Holy Passion, interspersed with one-minute segments on such topics as God’s righteousness, beauty, mercy and love, narrated by Don Nalle of GLAD.

The first singles from the album hit radio in mid-May with an add date of May 31, 2002. “Let Everything That Has Breath” and “As Long As I Have Breath” will be promoted to adult contemporary and inspirational radio.

GLAD is comprised of Ed Nalle (lead vocals), Don Nalle (baritone vocals and bass), Chris Davis (bass vocals and guitar), Don Pardoe (first tenor and keyboards) and John Gates (second tenor vocals and drums). Originally formed in the ‘70s as a progressive rock ensemble with jazz and fusion influences, the band released their first project in 1978 with Myrrh/Word Records. Since then, GLAD has evolved into an adult contemporary band, whose releases have been interspersed with numerous highly successful a cappella projects, including the number-one selling albums The Acapella Project II and An A Cappella Christmas.

With over 1.5 million albums sold to their credit, GLAD has received numerous accolades and nominations from the Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, as well as from the Contemporary A Cappella Society, from which they have received several Contemporary A Cappella Awards.

GLAD has additionally been honored to perform at such events as the 2002 Easter sunrise service at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, and on the 1988 nationally televised Greater Rochester Billy Graham Crusade. Their performance of “Crown Him with Many Crowns” was also featured in the 1991 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association film “The Journey.”