While I enjoy their latest work, it's quite obvious they sold themselves out. Album Rating: 4. It my not have the best musicianship, but it is tight and heavy.
The Showdown A Chorus of Obliteration 3. Hailing from Elizabethton, Tennesee is a heavy metal 5 piece band known as "The Showdown. If I had to describe "A Chorus of Obliteration" in one word, it would be energy. Through furious double bass fills, upbeat vocals, and pinch harmonics, The Showdown never lets your adrenaline stop flowing.
Their formula is a drop-D pulloff frenzy with harmonized leads and a mix of heavy and sung vocals. Their Christianity becomes obvious in their lyrics in this song. It's their most cookie-cutter song with nothing special.
The lyrics sound like something from a Greek epic. Halfway through the song is a harmonized clean interlude, followed by a distorted tremolo riff that leads into a harmoized riff of the same melody as the interlude. The song ends on a heavy note. Clocking in ay , there isn't any repetitive filler in this song.
The screaming is brutal and energetic. Around , they play an incredible southern metal style breakdown. Expect lots of pinch harmonics and double bass in this part of the song. Around , they play with a start-stop style with fills in between. The breakdown flows into a harmonized tremolo riff with heavy screaming underneath. The song slows down to another harmonized riff. A seemingly endless double bass fill soon follows with "Stand, fight, the city is ours" over it.
The next 20 seconds sounds like the soundtrack of a chariot fight, followed by what sounds like a victory song. However, after the introduction is one of The Showdown's heaviest songs. Full of start-stop, double bass, and harmonized riffs, this song will keep the energy flowing. The only part that brings this song down to a 7 is the repitition.
Singers trade back and fourth ofer a heavy beat and another seemingly endless double bass. The end of the song becomes more upbeat with an almost Pantera-esque solo following. It starts off with a very poppy guitar riff, and soon leads into the Showdown's traditional formula.
Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro. The Showdown's heaviest song. Blast beats, double bass, start-stop. It is important to have both earphones on for this song as the harmony is played in the left channel, the right channel, and then both. The guitar solo is fast and relentless. Other than that, there isn't anything special about this song.
The guitar is well written and the violin accompanies it well. The Showdown's Christianity is evident in the lyrics of this song. The second half of the song is slow and powerful. If you listen closely, you can hear a piano underneath all that chaos. A simplistic drumming bit sets the tone for the next minute or so, then is joined by dual guitars which change from light melody to harder hitting noise. When I first heard the vocals, I almost cried, "Oh, great, it's power metal".
Even before I could finish that thought, screaming insanity blared through the speakers as though it were the voice of God.
This album is not power metal, children. The vocals as mentioned are varied. Singing exists when they choose to slow down on the final track, "Laid To Rest", but the calm is soon cast aside for some scream-preaching. Epic comes to mind. There is the half-yell, half-scream thing similar to Order of the Fly, yet fitting for the album.
The screaming consists of highs like that of Escape the Fate, except the ones on A Chorus of Obliteration are good. The deeps are pretty sweet, but something you could also find in many other bands. However, it does impress me how the vocalist can go from lows to highs as rapidly as he does. There is a bit of darting, fast screaming occasionally. Overall, it's rather cool. There are some parts worthy of playing just to hear something unique and even the average parts are awesome on this album.
Although it isn't one for technicality like some older Crimson Armada, it's still fast-paced and brutal. In short, you won't find A Chorus of Obliteration on an emo kid's wishlist.
Keep it brutal. A few years ago I remember a friend telling me about a website called PureVolume, and how it was such a great site for finding new bands. So for the next few weeks I searched out the site for up and coming metal bands, jumping from random profile to random profile. To make a long story short, the site didn't really help at all. In fact, I only remember two of the several dozen bands whom I listened to.
Now for those of you who care, The Showdown is a quintet hailing from Elizabethton, Tennessee. Formed in , they've released two albums to date, and though their latest album is a fairly mediocre collection of southern rock songs, the band was once an interesting metalcore act with a hell of a lot of potential. Enter A Chorus of Obliteration. Though A Chorus of Obliteration is not a particularly original offering, it did show listeners that The Showdown had all the tools to become a leader in the genre.
The music heard throughout the 47 or so minute release is an excellent combination of energy, aggression, melody and brutality, all of which play an important role in the album's music.
Heaviness and aggression are particularly stressed throughout tracks such as From the Mouth of Gath Comes Terror and Dagon Undone The Reckoning , and the band does a decent job at conveying the ferocity of some of their lyrical passages. But what makes A Chorus of Obliteration so much fun to listen to is not the energetic breakdowns which the band slides through or the brutal screams of frontman David Bunton.
No, the real story behind the band is the infectious solos, harmonies, and leads pulled off by guitarists Josh Childers and Travis Bailey. Of course, with this being The Showdown's first record there will be some obvious kinks for the group to work out.
A major issue with A Chorus of Obliteration is that it lacks variety. Most of the songs, specifically the middle three songs, From the Mouth of Gath Comes Terror though this is one of the record's stronger outings , A Proclamation of Evil's Fate, and Dagon Undone, follow a very similar formula to one another, and at times the songs feel as though they are the same song repeated over and over. Another aspect which The Showdown could have worked on was the vocals.
Though David Bunton's clean vocals are very well done, his harsh screams can get rather annoying. Especially in a song like From the Mouth of Gath where it is the only vocal style he employs for the song's full runtime, his efforts can get quite hard on the ears as the quality wavers from acceptable to cringe worthy.
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