Review: Showdown – Feel The Heat

Independent (June 9th, 2023)

Reviewer: Jason Hopper

Showdown (Not to be confused with the Christian band The Showdown) is a relatively new band that released their debut album in 2020. Promotion and touring during the pandemic made it difficult for the band and a new EP was recorded late last year to re-introduce the band to those who may have missed the band the first time around. They got a throwback sound that is very 80s hard rock influenced.  A few snippets of songs online caught my ear and I decided to give this band a listen.

Opening track ‘Freedom Calls’ starts out promising enough. Its opening riff is a significant rip-off of Dio’s ‘Stand Up and Shout’ played slightly slower but showcases a lot of energy…until the chorus. Bridges matter in songs and its name denotes a link between the verses and chorus.  With no bridge in the song, the choice is made to stop the music dead in its tracks to allow the change in tempo from the verse to the chorus. That’s a mistake as it’s too big of a melody jump from one section of the song to the next. It’s abrupt, harsh, and auditorily displeasing. Not a great way to start the album.

‘I Ain’t Here For Love’ is slightly better as there no abrupt shifts, but again the band forgoes a bridge and goes straight from verse to chorus. The chorus increases the drums double time.  The tonal shifts are not harsh, but the band once again could have benefitted from a bridge structure. Sound wise, it’s high energy, but nothing that makes me want to revisit the song.

We get a tempo change with power ballad ‘Love Bites’ and finally a bridge. It’s a decent track but the production does it no favours. All the instruments sound cranked, and the song is constructed in a way that does not allow the melody to breathe. The result is a ballad that sounds like it’s racing to the finish line. Slowing things down slightly or allowing the melody to linger a bit before transitioning from the verse to bridge to chorus would have done wonders for the track.

A synth feel opens up mid-tempo rocker ‘One Shot At Your Heart’ and what really grabs my attention is how much lead vocalist Nikki Z sounds like Pekka Ansio Heino, lead singer of Brother Firetribe, on this track. Nikki takes a lower register approach and I wish he had shown a little of this restraint on the first two tracks. His delivery makes the song sound like an unreleased Brother Firetribe track and that’s right up my alley. A standout track for sure.

Track five’s ‘Rock Your Life’ is a return to the problem that detracts from the first two songs.  There’s no bridge between the verse and the chorus. The band instead decided to continue to play the melody after verse one sans vocals, with that serving as the “bridge”. It’s such a bizarre choice and makes the song feel like it is incomplete. It’s almost like the song was in demo form and the band decided that it was good enough and threw it on the album.

Final track ‘Slave To The Game’ is the heaviest track on the album, with the band at least constructing something of a bridge which makes it stand out slightly from the verses. I dug the deep vocals transposed with the higher register in the alternating lines of the chorus. The proper song structure makes for a fun song and is easily the second-best song on the EP.

This album should have been called ‘A Bridge Too Far’. What a bizarre choice to forgo a critical song structure component on half the EP. The result is three of the tracks either sound rushed, jarred, or unfinished.  It’s a shame as the band has a familiar but solid sound and could have benefitted from a producer that would have strengthened up the song structure and pulled something really special out of the guys. If you are going to check this out online, go for tracks four and six first, then the rest. Unfortunately, I can’t see this making it to the top of anyone’s best of list for this year.

Tracklist:

1. Freedom Calls
2. I Ain’t Here For Love
3. Love Bites
4. One Shot At Your Heart
5. Rock Your Life
6. Slave To The Game