Christian lead singer Chad Mattson is celebrating 13 years of sobriety with the new album “Follow Through” with the band Unspoken.

“Follow Through,” from Centricity Music, will be available Aug. 26, 2016.

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Unspoken bandUnspoken formed out of Chad’s quest for sobriety, he told me during a recent interview. His life turned around on a “self-made” missions trip to the Dominican Republic to get sober. That’s where he met guitarist Mike Gomez. The Lord led them to return to the States to preach and use music as a tool.

This record is “getting back to the first love that we had,” Chad said. Believers get busy and “tend not to finish it as strong as we started.” The album is a call to return to Jesus as your first love.

Unspoken is also composed of original band member Ariel Munoz, a drummer from Puerto Rico, said Chad, who is from Maine. They recently picked up a new member, a keyboard player from Bristol, Tennessee.

The band members did not want “Follow Through” to be a repeat of their first album, although it does have diverse styles like before. Chad described “Follow Through” as a lot of fun, upbeat with lots of victory while also featuring struggles and perseverance. Those are themes that everyone can relate to and be encouraged by, he said.

One title, “Life In the Death Of Me,” is like an autobiographical song of where Chad was at one time. Chad described it as soulful, hooky, hip-hop influenced. He calls it “my story,” and more.

“It’s all of our stories,” he said. “Jesus said that if a man wants to find his life, he has to lose it first. And if he wants to keep his life, he will lose it. This is really about finding life in Jesus Christ as we die to ourselves.”

He calls it real. The song talks about him waking from a dream and seeing his name on a headstone. Addiction was leading him in that direction, but the Lord “changed it all around.”

Another title, “The Cure,” describes Chad’s knowledge of what it means to be broken and to seek a remedy. “I came out of the drug culture,” he said in a press release. “From what I can tell it’s even worse now than it was when I was in it. We’re all looking for some kind of answers, some kind of fulfillment. That’s been the state of humanity for thousands of years. But the good news is, there’s something to fill that hunger. There’s something to heal that pain. There is a cure, and it’s Jesus.”

Chad never dreamed of being a musician until he was saved. He learned God is not looking for our skills but for people who make themselves available to him, and when we do, He gives us abilities (or gifts). That's good, he said, since he wanted to play basketball but "was too short."

Jon Lowry, the bass player, said in a press release, that there is more praise and thanksgiving on “Follow Through.” The album’s first single, “Higher, expresses that sentiment. A soulful celebration that the band collectively wrote around an inspiring horn riff, the song is an unconventional praise song, the press release states.

More information about Unspoken is at http://unspokenmusic.com/site. You can learn about tour dates, buy their music and more. The album is also available on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon.

— Jason Reynolds