In 1968, writer/producer
David Axelrod took over the career of the proto-psych one-hit wonders
the Electric Prunes for the entirety of two thoroughly bizarre psychedelic-religious rock operas,
Mass in F Minor and
Release of an Oath. Those albums are an important touchstone when listening to
John Michael Talbot's
Monk Rock: after a pair of fairly typical pieces of hard-rocking CCM, "One Body in Christ" and "Spread the Good News,"
Monk Rock is basically a one-album distillation of those two
Electric Prunes records in concept and execution: songs like "Sanctus" and "Kyrie" swing between Latin chanting and more melodic English transliterations, set to jangle-fuzzy, neo-psych guitar rock tunes. "Te Deum," which oddly interpolates a fast-picking banjo into the mix, is the best of the lot, but the entire album deserves a certain amount of respect for its oddball majesty and the fact that
Talbot is approaching this material completely straight but without the ponderous self-seriousness that would sink a project like this.