The Showdown - Blood in the Gears

OK, I wish to start with a little background to build up my thoughts on this new release. Album number one, A Chorus of Obliteration was a modern metal monster; with a typical vocal styles that leaned a bit more heavily on the extreme/screaming/growling style mixed with singing as most bands use these days.

Album number two, Temptation Come My Way was a drastic change from the first, and looked and sounded a LOT like Metallica's "Black album" with a heavy bent towards southern metal.Vocal style had little to no extreme screaming/growling style to it, but was down-and-dirty gritty singing. Most fans of the first album really didn't like this change. I personally thought it was great.



Album number three, Back Breaker, to me was kind of a combination of the sound of the first and second. The vocals were a more intense than the second album, but not quite as extreme as the first album, and the music was a bit more aggressive like the first album, with a bit less of the southern metal or Metallica feel.

So, with this new release, Blood In the Gears, which hits the shelves next week on 8/24, we have a sound that, to me, is like a combination of the last two releases. Back is a heavy influence of the southern metal thrash sound, but without the heavy Metallica influence; this time sounding more along the lines of bands like Black Label Society, Five Finger Death Punch, Down, Pantera, and other such ultra heavy low end, gritty vocals styled bands. Vocal styles go back and forth between the singing normally heard, and a bit of a more extreme growling. In a nutshell, this album is just stinkin' HEAVY!

New members didn't make any radical changes in the sound of this Tennessee band. Nor the fact that core member Josh Childers, who in the past wrote about 95% of the music, this time let the new guys do most of the writing. So, no radical changes are found this time around.

On bass we now have Jeremiah Scott had previously been involved with the band from the production side of things on previous albums. Stepping in on guitar is Patrick Judge, who also serves as axeman for Demon Hunter. And joining the rhythm section for this album, is Demon hunter drummer "Yogi" Watts, though he has not stepped in as a permanent drummer.

In another interview, I found a great description of the lyrical content of their discs:

Childers admits that lyrically, The Showdown's first album, 2004's A Chorus of Obliteration boasted "Bible stories made metal" and that 2007's Temptation Come My Way was "more internal." He attests to 2008's Back Breaker being "all over the place," but says Blood in the Gears is themed around concept of the empire in history and the bad things it does to a culture. "It's the classic comparison of America to the fall of Rome," Childers said. "The central authority tends to distort and then have a revolution with the right intentions but when you centralize power, and it's not personal, it is bad for people in general and makes you less human. You become part of an empire, giving up more power to be more of a slave and less human. Dave and I really have something to say. It's not whining about breaking up with a girlfriend, but it's more world themes and represents a change in mindset. The whole theme is that we are the blood in the gears of the machine, that which greases the gears."

The album starts off with a wild motorcycle revving, that settles to a hypnotic idling of the exhaust - then the guitar slowly fades in, mimicking the motorcycle's idle pattern before blasting full force into the opening track, "A Man Called Hell." The album as a whole takes what they have done in the past, steps it up a southern notch, wraps a rope around your legs, ties you to the back of a pick-up truck, and drags you through the mud of the southern back road metal experience.

Diversity is not the name of the game album wide, so the recipe is played out from start to finish of this album, so there are not surprises or oddities found here. If you like this style, you should like the entire slab of metal within.The one stand out difference, is the closing track on the album, "Digging my own Grave" which starts off more as an acoustic southern metal ballad of sorts. but it fits the feel of the album, and is a great closer to the experience.