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JFH Music Review



Showbread
Life, Kisses, And Other Wasted Efforts



Artist Info: Discography
Album length: 13 tracks: 48 minutes, 37 seconds
Street Date: May 13, 2003


Preceding the release of Showbread's Solid State debut (No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical) was this independent full-length on Steel Roots Records. Sounding like a rougher and rawer version of No Sir…, Life Kisses and Other Wasted Efforts captures Showbread in their formative stages. Not as focused as their Solid State debut and nowhere near as polished and melodic as Age of Reptiles, this record is easily inferior to both later releases. What Life… offers in large amounts however, is an intense dose of the spastic aggressiveness that Showbread appears to have lost in recent years.

Life, Kisses, and other Wasted Efforts is a thirteen-track assault on the senses. Each song features both vocalists Josh Dies and Ivory Mobley taking turns screeching Dies' cynical lyrics over loud and raucous riffs that are supported in sheer volume by the rest of the band. Due to the consistency with which Showbread deliver their attack (pummel, scream, repeat), all the songs on Life… end up blurring together after only a few listens - a trap that even No Sir… expertly avoided. It's a regrettable byproduct of an otherwise solid album filled with the type of spastic hardcore that this band has apparently abandoned all-too-soon.

Showbread completists and those missing the sheer intensity of the band's early days would do well to check out Life, Kisses, and Other Wasted Efforts. The rest, however, can satisfy themselves with the far superior (and much more easily accessible) No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical.

- Review date: 2/10/07, written by Sherwin Frias



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. Record Label: Steel Roots Records
. Album length: 13 tracks: 48 minutes, 37 seconds
. Street Date: May 13, 2003
. Buy It: Amazon.com
  1. What to Ask Yourself Before You Die
  2. Your Friends Are Fake
  3. I Had Music In My Heart, But Now My Heart Is Broken
  4. Killing Myself
  5. The Sad Thing About Sunday Morning
  6. Cry For Help
  7. Where We Begin And I End
  8. The Pursuit Of Happiness
  9. A Better World
  10. I Want To Get Married
  11. I Am A Machine Gun
  12. My Heart Is Yours
  13. Stabbing Art To Death

 

 

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