Next week see's the fifth round of the Ultimate Delirious? Song Poll in which we will be voting for the best song on Glo. (Incidentally, the poll title is meant to imply that this is a poll to find the 'ultimate d: song', not that it is the 'ultimate poll' - just thought I'd clear that up!). I might be jumping the gun a bit, but I thought I'd write about Glo today ahead of next week's vote.

My drive into work each day takes about 20 minutes, and this morning I put Glo into the CD player and spent the journey rediscovering a fantastic album. I've always thought it strange that the first thing you hear with Glo is something completely unrepresentative of Delirious? The first minute or so of track 1, God You Are My God, features chanting monks. I've often imagined someone picking this CD up, never having heard Delirious? before, sticking it in their stereo and wondering what on earth they'd purchased. For that reason I think it's a curious choice for an opening track, but hopefully most people listen on beyond the first minute and discover what a truly amazing album it is.

GYAMG (as we like to abbreviate it to) turns into a rocking masterpiece of music which eventually morphes into the second song, Gods Romance. I've always put this song down to being a good track live, but forgotten how great it was on CD. It probably helps to have seen it live, but I just love the few seconds of drums between the end of "Now's the time for the saints to shine..." and the starts of "...Everyone here is the kingdom come".

Glo is perhaps most famous for the track Investigate which is one of the most incredible d: songs you could ever witness live at a gig. But the band also did such a good job of capturing the enormity of this song on CD. Towards the end of the song the band just kick off into a stunning jamming session, seeming to get completely carried away with the song. It seems to last forever and today I found myself nodding my head in time to the thrasing guitars and feeling completely immersed in the music.

My journey came to an end half way through What Would I Have Done? This is another song that I've often skipped over in favour of some of my more preferred songs on Glo. But forcing myself to listen to it today I found myself noticing all the extra little touches that I'd forgotten. Things like the strings in the background which all go into making the song what it is.

That's as far as I got with the CD this morning, but my journey home tonight should be a good one. Of all the d: CDs so far, there is no better run of consecutive songs than the next 3 on Glo. My Glorious, Everything and Hang On To You. They are some of my favourite ever d: songs, and to get all 3 in a row makes this part of the CD one of my most listened to sections of music. Then there are the 4 songs at the end of the album. Well, maybe I'll listen to those next week.

Anyway, I realise this post has probably read a bit like a review of an album now nearly five years old (wow, was it really that long?). But listening to Glo again this morning was like discovering a new album for me. I've listened to it so many times in the past, although not so much in the last couple of years as the newer d: albums have grabbed my attention, and yet I can still listen to it and smile and get excited just as I did when I first listened to it. What an album!

After weeks of relative inactivity in the world of d:, and me bemoaning the lack of things to update Delirious.org.uk with, this last week has suddenly seen a flurry of activity and updates.

A press release from Furious? revealed the news all d: fans had been waiting for - confirmation of when the new album will be arriving: November. The bad news is that the release is still 6 months away, but at least the countdown has begun. We still know relatively little about the album, but no doubt more details will emerge over the next few months. Keep an eye on the New Album Feature Page on this site, which I keep up to date with all the latest details about the album.

The band headed off to North America at the end of last week for a 10-day tour consisting of 5 concerts in Canada (their first visit there for 2 years) and 3 in the USA. My good friend Brandon kindly sent me a review from last night's concert in Vancouver which is well worth checking out. On the subject of the tour, a special 'hello' to Mr Colin Walker who returns to the crew list for this NA tour as the band's monitor engineer. Colin is an e-mail subscriber to this blog, so I thought I'd give him a special mention to cheer him up as he hunches over his laptop in the back of the tour bus to read this. (Hope you've resolved your differences with Jon over the frisbee incident Colin!)

Other additions to the site in the last week have included two articles about d:. The first article is from the instore magaine of musical instrument retailer Sound Control. Whilst the glossy colour feature about d: is mainly lifted straight from the band's own press literature, it's still good to see the band mentioned by a secular outlet. The other article is an interview with Delirious? carried out by my friends at cMusicWeb back in March. It's an interesting read, with a few mentions about the new album.

In addition to the interview, cMusicWeb also supplied me with a batch of photos taken at the Manheim (Pennsylvania) concert. Just to reassure people who might be a little scared by the sight of a strange looking hairy man in the photos (see right), it is in fact Jon d: bassist sporting a slightly scary beard. But fear not, these photos are from earlier this year, and the beard has since disappeared.

Meanwhile, in between all of these recent updates, the Ultimate Delirious? Song Poll continues to run. We've now reached Round 4 'Mezzamorphis' and more than 200 people have already voted for their favourite song. Vote now if you haven't already. It's the closest poll so far, with Bliss currently in the lead by a very narrow margin. It's Ok and Heaven aren't far behind. The results of the previous round saw History Maker voted as best song on King of Fools, getting nearly double the votes of second placed Deeper.

Round 2 of the Ultimate Delirious? Song Poll has now ended, with Obsession coming out top on the Cutting Edge 3&4 album. This was a much closer result than with the first Cutting Edge album. Only 6 votes seperated Obsession from second place song, Did You Feel The Mountains. So Obsession now joins I Could Sing in the final of the Ultimate d: song, whilst Did You Feel The Mountains joins with Lord You Have My Heart in the wild-card round (as explained in my previous blog post).

Round 3 has now begun, so if you haven't done already, vote for your favourite song on King Of Fools. This is another tough round, with several very popular songs. Deeper and History Maker are the two big stand out songs and have taken the early lead, both have become well known classics that appear in nearly every live setlist. But there are also tracks like Sanctify, Promise, August 30th, White Ribbon Day, What A Friend... in fact, almost every song on King Of Fools is a classic! The Ultimate d: song poll is really reminding me how great some of the early d: songs are. Just wait till we get to Mezzamorphis next week. It just gets tougher each round.

A few weeks ago the Ultimate Delirious? Song Poll started on this website. I decided that with d: world being a little slow and quiet at the moment, it would be a good way to pass the time as we wait for the new album to arrive. I'd been meaning to do something with the 'Polls' section of the site for years, and finally decided this was the way to go.

I'm sure most d: fans have taken part in some kind of 'choose your favourite d: song' poll somewhere on the web in the past, but this (as the name suggests) is the ultimate poll. Here's how it works. Taking each d: album in turn, from Cutting Edge 1&2 through to World Service, people can choose their favourite song on the album. Then, we take the top song from each album and have a final vote to choose the ultimate song.

After talking about this with my good friend Clare recently, we came up with a slight extension to this process. As Clare pointed out, there are some very good d: songs that don't actually appear on any of the studio albums. So, I've decided to add an extra poll containing all those extra songs like Not Forgotten, Pursuit of Happiness, Touch and all the other B-sides. I'm also adding a 'Wild-Card' Poll just before the final. This will give some of the other great songs that just missed out on winning an album poll a second chance to reach the final. It will contain all of the second-placed songs from the album polls. So this is how the Ultimate d: Song Poll will shape up:

Round 1: Cutting Edge 1&2 (already finished)
Round 2: Cutting Edge 3&4 (currently in progress)
Round 3: King Of Fools
Round 4: Mezzamorphis
Round 5: Glo
Round 6: Audio Lessonover
Round 7: World Service
Round 8: B-Sides/Other tracks
Round 9: Wild-Card Poll (2nd place from previous rounds)
Round 10: The Final (The Ultimate d: Song)

So the final will contain 9 songs, one from each of the 7 studio albums, plus 1 from the b-sides poll and 1 further song chosen from all the 2nd-place songs. I hope that isn't too complicated! Hopefully by the end we will have found the true, fans' favourite, ultimate d: song. Make your predictions now. Will it be the church's favourite I Could Sing? Or maybe the old classic Deeper? Perhaps the live favourite Investigate? Only time will tell.

In April I took the decision to disable comments on this blog due to the large amounts of very unpleasant Spam that the blog was attracting. I promised back then that when Haloscan (the commenting system I use) offered a moderated commenting facility I would turn the comments back on. Well, thankfully Haloscan have now done this.

Unfortunately it requires me to upgrade to their Premium service for a small annual fee, but I decided it was worth it. Without comments I completely lost interest in writing the blog. It lost it's appeal without the interaction of visitors. You start to feel like nobody is reading what you've written since you get no feedback on what you've written. Therefore, what's the point in writing if nobody reads it? I know that isn't really true since a dedicated few told me they were reading the blog (thank you!), but anyway, without comments, I was bored of the blog.

So I am pleased to announce that the comments are back! The only slight catch is that when you post a comment you now have to wait until I've accepted it before it will appear on the blog. So there will be a slight delay between you commenting and it being visible. It's not ideal, but it's the best way to filter out all the abusive Spam comments.

So please add some comments when I write in the blog. It helps me to know that people are actually reading it!