Given their origins in California’s charismatic Vineyard Church, The Violet Burning’s music has always been characterized by emotion. Their 1989 debut, however, was too overwrought for its own good; its few gems (e.g., “There Is Nowhere Else,” “Rise Like the Lion”) were drowned out by Prince-lite funk, sappy ballads, and a preponderance of glam-rock solos. But three years later, bandleader Michael J. Pritzl — who, like The Cure’s Robert Smith, is the band’s sole constant member — figured out how to balance his heartfelt lyrics and passionate vocals with better arrangements and musicianship. The resulting album, Strength, stood head and shoulders above its predecessor and cast a long shadow over alternative Christian music throughout the ’90s, and even up until today.

Modern worship music often traffics in simplistic “Jesus is my boyfriend” lyrics that gloss over life’s hardships to promote “victorious Christian living.” Strength ignores all of that. Pritzl might employ quasi-romantic imagery, but his songs are characterized more by desperation. There’s no talk of victorious living, but rather, a never-ending plea for God’s grace amidst the world’s brokenness and one’s own frailty.

Thus, Pritzl is unafraid to cry out “I am nothing and I have nowhere to turn/I am nothing/So I lay down and cry for mercy” (“There Is No One Like You”) or, on the album’s most shocking moment (“Song of the Harlot”), compare himself to the prostitute who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears: “If I could be anyone at all/Let me be the whore at your feet.” On the album’s centerpiece, the eight-minute acoustic ballad “As I Am,” Pritzl and his bandmates, along with guest vocalist Jaime Eichler, lament the world’s darkness while imploring “Light of the world/Please, come shine on me.” And for good measure, they deliver a stunning cover of “Eleanor Rigby,” The Beatles’ haunting tale of alienation and loneliness.

As befitting such lyrics and themes, Strength’s music is filled with moody atmospherics and chiming guitars that evoke The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, and U2’s more ambient moments on The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree. Meanwhile, guitarist Shawn Tubbs (who would later go on to play with Stone Temple Pilots and Carrie Underwood) unleashes stirring solos on “There Is No One Like You” and “Stay with Me” that underscore the turmoil in Pritzl’s lyrics, and ensure Strength’s position as my favorite worship album of all time.