Review Summary: Let's ruin everything. Everything gets ruined.
Somehow, every Showbread album is a return to roots. Every album is somehow an attempt to recapture the magic of
No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical, a spastic exercise in keytar-laced post-hardcore that nimbly leaped from tongue-in-cheek to gravely serious. But in truth, that same spirit never left Showbread, even as they flirted with a poppier sound in
Age of Reptiles and a shockingly ill-advised worship album in
Who Can Know It? There was still a hint of aggression and an energy that few bands could replicate, even if it was occasionally buried.
But now, with this final Showbread album (did the title not give it away?), the “bottom of the bottoming out” as “I Am Horrible At Processing Rejection” puts it, this truly feels like the Showbread album all those fans back in 2004 were hoping for. Frontman Josh Dies said in an interview that as excited as he was to get the original lineup back together, there came a point where the band just exasperatedly tried to finish the record and stop overthinking. And it shows. This album is often sloppy and hastily constructed – forget the polish and sweeping themes of
Cancer (and you can definitely forget any sort of companion media with this one). It’s abrasive in a way even
Nihilism can’t touch.
And it’s exactly what those fans wanted. The anthemic chorus of the aforementioned “Rejection” seems designed to put every old Showbread fan at ease with its furious, repetitive screams and an oh-so-tasty keytar riff. The mixing here is masterful, with crunchy guitars and filthy bass perfectly capturing the band’s DIY aesthetic. There’s hardly a clean vocal until “Why Shouldn’t We Kill Ourselves?” which just might be the catchiest song Dies has ever written thanks to a lot of cheerleader-esque chants in the chorus, and in true Showbread form, it works perfectly despite having no good reason to.
In fairness, there’s not a lot of variation on Showdead, which is both blessing and curse. The core sound has been honed to a remarkable degree, but there are times the listener is left longing for some of the soaring instrumental passages of Cancer just to give context to all of the throat-shredding wails. Yes, “Nine Weeks, Four Days: The Fetus Develops Teeth” consists entirely of that, but it’s too little, too late. Fortunately, most of the songs zoom by quickly, like the melodic, punchy “Legacy of Skubalon” and clearly-designed-for-farewell-tours “Raw Rock Theology.”
The one exception is the clunky closer “Life After Life After Death,” which sounds like the first half of a typical Showbread album-ending barnburner, but somehow never gets out of second gear despite a nearly seven-minute runtime. The abrupt ending doesn’t do it any favors. “Dear John Piper: Stillbirth in Space” is more than a little heavy-handed, but an instrumentally sparse approach carries it along regardless, adding gravitas to Dies’ theological rants.
Ultimately,
Showdead is an act of fan service more than an artistic statement. It’s Dies and company going out on one final bang, rather than slowly fading into the crowded graveyard of Christian bands who sort of hit it big once or twice. But it’s also that rare fan service that gives newcomers a reason to dig into past work and still leaves fans satisfied. This isn’t Showbread’s best work, but it’s the most appropriate farewell we could have hoped for.
