Notes Are Shattered

Holy crap, there's music here!

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Showbread - No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical

YAY! Ben has a music blog! For my first post, I decided to upload a few tracks by Showbread off their album No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical, which I thought was fitting since I stole the title from their song "The Dissonance of Discontent". It took me a while to get into Showbread, a lot of which I blame on some of the vocals. When I first heard the album, I think I was expecting spazcore in the vein of Norma Jean or Training For Utopia. What I got instead were elements of hardcore, math rock, a little spaz, and a ton of straightforward face-melting ROCK... with both clean vocals and high-pitched screaming. I liked the clean vocals, but the screaming seemed out of place at times. So did the keytar. Yes, I said keytar. However, the song about Evil Dead II ("Dead By Dawn") drew me back simply because of its subject matter, and after a few listens, what had formerly sounded disjointed and chaotic (in a bad way) started to make sense. From the weird electronic bounce of "Mouth Like A Magazine" to the "raw rock" (the band's term) power of "The Dissonance of Discontent" to the sad, yet somehow uplifting and entirely relatable "Matthias Replaces Judas", which I'm sure features Reese Roper from Five Iron Frenzy on vocals, Showbread manages to be diverse while still making a cohesive album. If you're into the likes of the Blood Brothers or labelmates He Is Legend, you may want to give Showbread a listen or three, since it may take time to sink in.



1. A Llama Eats A Giraffe (And Vice Versa)
2. Dead By Dawn
3. Mouth Like A Magazine
4. If You Like Me Check Yes, If You Don't I'll Die
5. Sampsa Meets Kafka
6. So Selfish It's Funny
7. The Missing Wife
8. Welcome To Plainfield Tobe Hooper
9. And the Smokers And Children Shall Be Cast Down
10. Stabbing Art To Death
11. The Dissonance of Discontent
12. Matthias Replaces Judas
13. The Bell Jar

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