Showbread

Item: Life, Kisses and Other Wasted Efforts
Author: Kriss Stress

Life, Kisses and Other Wasted Efforts

(2003)

Reviewed by Kriss Stress

Discogs YouTube

Label Steelroots RecordsDecapolisAugust 2003

hardcore post-hardcore punk

It's a rare occurrence when bands have the privilege of helping redefine a new genre, but it's all too common for many an artist to claim discovering (or rediscovering for that matter) the said genre. With Showbread, they do both minus the arrogance and plus the humility. With their first full-length record (on the recently folded Steelroots label) "Life, Kisses and Other Wasted Efforts", the six-piece band attempts to show us the future of music only as they see it - Raw Rock.

"What To Ask Yourself Before You Die" opens the record with lead vocalist Josh Dies' lamenting over running for the finish line and eventually crossing it until the question enters his mind - What's the Point? This leads immediately into the ode to plastic friends now infamous with misfits and outcasts nationwide - "Your Friends Are Fake". Opening with a smattering of keyboard effects (absent from the original, independently produced version), Showbread launches into several different Points both lyrically and musically.

"Killing Myself" finds Dies and co-vocalist Ivory Mobley screaming to their Savior for redemption that they might die to themselves more and more while the rest of the band pounds out measure after measure of their Refused influenced rock n' roll before buzz bombing keyboards drop into oblivion and explode into the riveting and violent "The Sad Thing About Sunday Morning" which spasms and jerks about like a child who hasn't gotten his way. The track builds and climaxes with rising chord changes that are lightning fast and as precise as the inside of a clock.

"Where We Begin and Where I End" opens with uber fast drums and Dies giving a smooth vocal delivery, which has always been a rare occurrence in the music of Showbread. Surprisingly when he sings, the desperation in his voice is what makes him different from other vocalists who try to sound like Cookie Monster one moment while attempting to be a choirboy the next.

Comparisons to Refused vocalist Dennis Lyxzén have always been a constant for Dies and Mobley and with songs like "I Am A Machine Gun" (which is much like its earlier version), they shamelessly show why these comparisons are so. Their high shrieks atop the double guitar bludgeoning of Matt Davis and Mike Jensen and the thunderstorm rhythm section of Marvin Reilly beating every drop of glory out of his drumset and Patrick Porter building bass lines that roll atop the chaos are always what have characterized Showbread.

"Stabbing Art To Death" finds Dies proclaiming that we'll know that music is dead because they've killed it. This isn't a claim of pride or even arrogance, rather it's a claim of fact. And they're not just referring to themselves when they say They. The scary thing is that they're referring to us all because we've all been the benefactors of insincerity and mediocrity in our own individual lives. "Father you inspire me to sing to you" is a sentiment that we should all share, but when Showbread states it, it's more apocalyptic than anything else because now more than ever, we need reminding that perhaps we're stabbing not only Art to death, but our Witness. With bands like Showbread around, we'll never forget that art isn't in what corporations or institutions teach us - It's in the Heart.