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by erin thursby
scopes1925@msn.com
What: The Showdown
When: February 25th @ 7PM
Where: Murray Hill Theater
“Just watch MTV or Fuse and they are littered with music videos of dudes who look like they are scared to be in their own band... If it gets any worse I’m going to just put ‘Enter Sandman’ on repeat, then I won’t have to listen to all those sensitive feminine bands crying and whining.”— David Bunton, Front man of the Showdown.
The Showdown strives to be old school, bad-boy rock and roll. They don’t understand emo, and they never ever want to. They are the anti-glam rockers who have holes in their jeans and flannel on their backs. They would never wear eye-liner and they don’t whine about their depressing fate.
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One of the reasons they won’t be whining, is that fate has been fairly kind to the band so far. When I spoke with David Bunton of The Showdown for an EU interview, he talked about how effortlessly the band got signed: “They found us on MP3.com…We were saying there’s no way were going to get a van [to tour] we just kept telling…[the label] no and they just kept on calling me…Finally we were just like ‘ahhh why not.’… By the time I was at the end of college we just ended up getting signed. Everybody either finished college or quit and we went on tour.”
The Showdown released their sophomore CD this month, Temptation Come My Way. It’s a hard driving heavy metal album with a generous side of Southern Rock. They even pay tribute to Kansas on the album by covering ‘Carry On Wayward Son,’ the album’s one and only cover. With guitar solos and the occasional cowbell thrown in, these hard rockers borrow enough gimmicks to be cool, running the metal gamut, including European Death Metal. They’ve definitely backed down on the screamed lyrics they seemed to favor on A Chorus of Obliteration, the first CD they cut. With their long locks and ripped attire, they look to be typical grunge metal rockers.
Hearing the music of The Showdown, you’d expect that they spend much of their spare time trashing hotel rooms, drinking and snorting high-grade H. That’s pretty far from the truth. The band actually got together because all founding members were band geeks in the high school marching band. They started jamming after school and then played together through college. The biggest concern for the band was having fun and playing good music, not any sort of attempt to be stars or party. “We would play local shows,” says Bunton, “[because] you can get anywhere from Northeast Tennessee…We were all in school, working jobs. That’s how we got started…Our drummer lived like 5 hours away so we would play on the weekend…playing a show was more like a vacation.”
The band also has Christian roots, which they don’t necessarily cater to. The whole band has the number 777 (known as the number of the Lord) tattooed on their wrists, something they did together on whim as show of solidarity towards the band and God. Their first album was also a concept album based on the struggle between good and evil as laid out in Revelation. Christianity is a big part of their lives. According to Bunton, all the members of the band are Christians “but our goal isn’t to get on Christian radio.” Mainly what they want is to be part of that big epic sound that typifies metal and give it greatness. Catch that metal greatness this Sunday at the Murray Hill Theater.
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