Regina Vandereijk – The Lord is There

Regina Vandereijk
The Lord is There
Royal Increase Music (release date: January 24, 2025)

By Robert M. Marovich

The Lord is There is the first full-length album by CCM singer Regina Vandereijk and the follow-up to her spectacular 2024 EP Love Called Her Home, which included “Jesus,” JGM’s Best Song of 2024.

A native of North Carolina now living in the Netherlands, Regina possesses a commanding and melodic voice, one that is just as capable of filling an auditorium as bouncing off the high ceilings of megachurches. The singer’s confidence suggests years of honing her craft.

The Lord is There is full of compelling melodies, such as “Wake Up Boy,” which not so much invites as mandates listeners to get out and inhale the splendor of the natural world. Songs like “Wave of Mercy,” “Open Up the Doors,” and “You’re the Light” possess the hypnotic beat, dramatic and atmospheric arrangement, and extended length popularized by groups such as Hillsong UNITED. Poetic messages of praise and worship are bathed in swirling and crashing waves of sound. The selections grow on you with repeated listening.

Harkening to her country roots, Regina incorporates a string band, complete with fiddle, banjo, and dobro, on “Always” and “We Will Overcome.” The latter is not the gospel-hymn-turned-civil-rights-anthem but a newly-composed song filled with optimism.

While the collection of songs on The Lord is There is solid and showcases Regina’s singing well, what made her Love Called Her Home EP so devastating was its unadorned and unapologetic country-flavored gospel soul. The focus on the new album is more conventional CCM. Two album tracks that come closest to the Carolina-inspired sound of the EP, in terms of melody and delivery, is the praise ballad “Promise Keeper,” which cries out for singing along, and the wedding-ready “Two Become One.”

Notwithstanding the sonic shift, The Lord is There introduces to some and presents to others an exciting new CCM star-in-the-making. Major labels need to take notice or lose out.

Four of Five Stars

Picks: “Promise Keeper,” “Two Become One”