The Fear of God
Artist: Showbread
Label: Tooth & Nail
Lengh: 13 tracks / 45:58

How do you follow up a two-disc concept album industrial opus?  If  you're Showbread, you go back to the raw.  The Fear of God presents straight-ahead rock & roll stitched together from a variety of influences, tinged with a certain John Romero-esque quality.  The  
experiment, while not entirely successful, does yield some quality tunes.

The problem with The Fear of God is simply that it is often too straight-forward for for its own good; songs like "Nothing Matters Anymore" and "Regret Consumes Me" merely serve to remind the listener of similar and better material on the group's prior albums.    The  
album-closing pair of slow songs both meander aimlessly, cliche and uninteresting ("The Fear of God" strangely sounds like a coarse, inferior imitation of Jars of Clay's "Oh My God," if that makes any sense).  I was prepared to write the album off as the lesser brother  
of Showbread's sophomore T&N release, Age of Reptiles, as a solid but unremarkable outing...

There's a segment of five songs in the middle of the album, however, which mix elements of 1950s rock, nineties power-alt, punk rock, modern screamo and trashy 70s rock to great effect.  What is Raw Rock?  Everything and anything that could conceivably ROCK,  apparently.  "Vehement" has a SICK bass-line while "Let There Be Raw" is a fitting Showbread anthem; "Shepherd, No Sheep" has hilariously satirical lyrics ("I hate music because of you") over an energetic major-chord rocker, and "I Think I'm Going to See You" is absolutely fantastic post-grunge power-pop.  "Lost Connection With The Head" is another danceable trashy rocker.

Is The Fear of God a fantastic album?  No.  Is it a bad album?  Again, no.  Showbread have set the bar so high with their prior work, that merely "good" doesn't measure up.  Nor does delivering only half of what could have been a great album.  I respect the intent  behind The Fear of God but I think Showbread need to push themselves.  Sometimes artists create best when the process is not "easy;" Showbread may be among them.

Ryan Ro [www.RNSrobot.com | www.twitter.com/RNSrobot]