Temptation Come My Way

The American South is a hatchery for well-known bands and plenty more lesser-known ones that shape the rock and metal scene in a big way, leaving indelible streaks of sweat and sincerity behind. Two years ago they swore by the sentiment of southern rock and speed metal that bordered on very digestible death metal. Two years isn’t a lot, but The Showdown, the Tennessee five-piece, are back with a new record. Backed by plenty of road mileage and a new drummer, they’ve unrolled a new face as a commercially ambitious band, and they want to win us over with something that can be filed under softer territory than their predecessor The Chorus Obliteration. Ladies and gentlemen: Temptation Come My Way is the picture of what the boys from Elizabethton have to offer, with nothing to lose. Debauchery, destruction and lightness in the same breath. After shedding their skin, they’ve matured into something undoubtedly new and different. In the flood of light pop and the soap bubbles of assorted one-day flies, rock has gone soft too, with very thin, see-through skin. True, soft rock and ballads hit the spot every now and then, but it’s still often pretty fine when music simply smacks you over the head like a ten-ton pneumatic hammer, and all that drips out of your head from the press between your left and right ear is blood and the lewd beauty of full-blooded rock.

Temptation Come My Way is, for anyone who didn’t know them before, a mosaic of highly infectious tunes, hooks and melodies that are easy to memorize, and above all it’s something that would be a lot easier to fire off onto the radio waves. The boys abuse electricity to serve up a hellishly warm, if not downright hot sound of guitar riffs and a sonic cluster of little details they picked up on from Metallica, Three Doors Down and Maiden, and listeners with a more rustic bent, the ones used to the sound of Black Sabbath and a few of Zack Wylde’s masturbatory solos, will be pleased too. A lovely prospect, no? And yet a slightly bitter aftertaste lingers, but more on that a bit later.

Since review copies of records are sometimes mischievously shuffled, the track order was, from the very first listen, anything but right, so I had to dig into what I was hearing even deeper. My version of the album kicks off right out of the gate with very Maiden-esque guitars and frothy, kitschy melodies. ‘I Victim (Here’s To The Year)’ would make a splendid opener if David Bunton would hold off just a little on peddling his verbal expressions of his vacuum-emptied world, which he markets with a voice I’ve heard somewhere before. In Silverchair. The tempo is set to hook you and prep you for what’s next. ‘Head Down’ after a pussy intro of a posing cowbell and a sweet-sounding riff, the boys can’t decide whether to charge ahead and wreck stuff or turn the song into a ballad. A couple of squeals of guitar solos, which Travis Bailey and Josh Childers weave into a lacy scarf, keep them from being written off as sellouts and make the whole thing breathe a little warmer, but the lameness kicks in again after the second repetition of the chorus. Convinced they’ve got you in their claws, The Showdown decide to carry on with a hymn of gratitude, so the heart beats monotonously and without a speck of stress. ‘We Die Young’ is structurally similar to the earlier excursions through a palette of worn-out, threadbare clichés. A ton of ballast under a thin layer of prosaicness and predictability, the kind people who copy can’t avoid. A trip to the eighties, done the nineties and new-millennium way. ‘It Drinks From Me’. An acoustic guitar with a very strong taste of the South blends nicely with forced, raspy vocals and a creeping rhythm in a family tale out of some swamp. Dad and Mom drink, and the kids give themselves over to switching off thoughts about how things could be better. The song gets topped off with a fresh transfusion of stale blood and cute guitar solos. It doesn’t matter what you’ve got to say. All that matters is that you look good, smile nicely from photos and posters, and convince softened-up teenage girls and boys, who don’t listen to the lyrics, to buy the record, right? The market logic that has become the alpha and omega of how things are done is obvious. ‘Temptation Come My Way’ reminds me of something else entirely. Do you hear Metallica? And not the one that broke new ground before the black album. Actually I hear Hetfield and his redneck country vocals. On something like Load or Re-Load. Hmmm… Any comment on whether I like it is superfluous once I let you in on a little secret: I liked Metallica better on something like Master Of Puppets. The suspicion that this was just a slip in choosing role models (who knows, maybe only Metallica’s latest creations got delivered to the backwater village, the ones you could only get by buying a five-kilo pack of laundry detergent…) melts away in what follows. continues the interrupted saga of the light eighties sound. It’s not all about solos. It’s about a heavy rhythm and riff trickery. There’s no denying that the record is pretty carefully steered in its production and that the sound is quite commendable. Paul Ebersold definitely contributed in part to the changed look, having made bands like Three Doors Down and Saliva more commercially marketable before he got to Ozzy’s darlings The Showdown (I’ll venture to say they are at least a little bit, since under a ton of crap you can make out the sound of the guitar virtuosity of someone like Randy Rhoads). Where those two are now only their nearest and dearest can tell you, since there’s somehow been no room for them on the radio waves lately… ‘Spitting In The Wind”Fanatics And Whores’ tries rather ferociously to convince with greasy flesh-tearing and fake chanting that grows into a derivative of a Black Lebel Society song. ‘Death Finds Us Breathing’ repeats what we’ve already heard, but the cover of Kansas comes as a surprise: ‘Carry On My Wayward Son’, which continues the trend of remakes, though this one is, I have to admit, more than listenable. It does recall Ville Valo and Him with a cowbell, but you can’t blame them. This time they at least openly admit they’ve taken an already assembled car and set out to turn it into a slightly more wicked-sounding hot rod. And they pull it off. My favorite is ‘Breath Of The Swamp’, which sounds full and unrestrained. A proper cannonade of phenomenal vocals and guitar charging. Just enough to show the guys know what they’re doing and can deliver. Like finally getting to your Budweiser after a whole day of thirst and feeding the wild beast. Go into ‘Six Feet Under’ with mixed feelings, though, since it’s actually one of the more concentrated killers on the record. Eighties vibes and sing-alongs, harmonized guitars and imbecilic lyrics make for a downright toxic mix. As if you’d shot a blend of uppers and laxatives into your vein at the same time. The effect depends on the dose. Maiden and Metallica, sounding as if they’d played a carefree song together, get back on track with ‘Forget My Name’. And at the end of the track, a feeling of being torn and a mix of bitterness that you can’t wash out even with a hectoliter of Vanish.

If we were being gentler and more considerate, we could conditionally say that Temptation Come My Way is in fact an unrevolutionary product you can listen to, even quietly sipping a beer, enjoying a state of carefree killing off the last little cloud of constructive but, at that moment, entirely unnecessary thoughts. There’s something here for everyone (and precious little for the specialized tastes of connoisseurs, since if you want to please every taste…): classic rock, metal, southern rock and pussy pop. I was personally a little disappointed with what’s on offer, since the boys promised a lot more with their debut The Chorus Of Obliteration. Maturing is necessary, sure, but after two years their wild beast has become a lot more toothless and boring. So we can await the sequel with something close to fear. Maybe the next record will bring us Justin Timberlake and duets with Brittney Spears. Just a little patience. In about two years, the last shadows of wild illusions may fall…