First posed as a challenge in the CMR forums in July, The nazpastor Challenge quickly slid into the realm of the forgotten.  Knowing the vast knowledge of CCM and memory of CCM album covers possessed by nazpastor, I shared the image of the wallpaper I use for the desktop of one of my monitors and posed the task of identifying as many of the covers as possible.  nazpastor sent me a list of titles he knew, but the list sat in my e-mail inbox for a long time while I dealt with personal issues.  I have been periodically taking time to give this challenge an improved treatment, something it has long deserved.  nazpastor, my apologies for the delay. I hope that this will be entertaining for other people as well, anyone who would like to think back over the covers of classic Christian music, from contemporary to metal, pop to industrial...bluegrass to lullaby?  See what you recognize.

I dissected my wallpaper into thumbnails for this web page, so this is actually 693 individual pictures.  I'm giving this the deluxe treatment, but it'll take time.  For the first half, click on the thumbnail of a cover to view a page with details about that disc.  For the second half of the challenge, hovering over a thumbnail will provide information temporarily.  Eventually you should be able to click on every thumbnail to view details about the title. Test yourself and see what covers you can identify.  If nazpastor identified the cover you'll see the nazpastor whammy in the lower left corner of the details page.  Take your time.  Have fun.  Think you know one of the albums?  Click and find out.  Don't know but want to find out?  Click and see what there is to see.  Enjoy yourself.

But be warned.  This covers several decades: the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.  And it covers a lot of musical styles: blues, folk, new age, lullaby, jazz, classic rock, hard rock, soft rock, alternative rock, pop, contemporary, rap, hip-hop, gospel, acappella, praise & worship, modern worship, country, southern gospel, bluegrass, ambient, electronica, dance, house, techno, technoindustrial, industrial, classic metal, thrash metal, speed metal, power metal, doom metal, death metal, grindcore, metalcore, hardcore, punk, ska, compilations, soundtracks and styles I'm sure I forgot to list.  To top it off you'll find full length label releases--but you'll also find some indies, singles, EPs and promo items scattered here and there, with country of issue being primarily U.S.--but not always.  If it looked good in a wallpaper collage, I used it.  The challenge came later, and it became...well, challenging.

If you want to use this as wallpaper, here's the full image.  Please don't reproduce this image, or the thumbnails, or link this page or any of the detail pages, without my permission.  Thank you.  (HEROchallenge@verizon.net)