Showbread (band) - Musical and Lyrical Style

Musical and Lyrical Style

During the first half of the band's career, their trademark was the alternating vocals between Josh Dies and Ivory Mobley that included elements of screaming, yelling, and singing. Combined with their frenetic live shows, they were often labelled a spazz rock band. Additionally, they utilized a keytar between 2004 and 2008 while John Giddens was the synthesizer player, as well as a few of the live shows in 2009 when Garret Holmes used a keytar. In keeping with their campaign for originality in the music scene, the band generally does not refer to their music as a particular genre; instead, they prefer the term "raw rock". Matt Davis, the band's former lead guitarist, stated, "No one ever knew what to say when people asked what style of music we were, so rather than come up with some hyphen filled moniker, we just started saying 'raw rock' and turned it into our campaign." Josh Dies also credits Ivory Mobley with the idea, stating "For the longest time we all used to live together and at some point like Ivory started saying raw all the time. Anytime something was good he'd go 'that's raw' and than like so it became to the point where we said raw for everything, anytime anything was great it was raw. At the same point, everyone was asking us what we call our music and no one knew what to say, just uh I don't know what we call our music, it's rock."

Because of their presence on Tooth and Nail records and use of screaming vocals, Showbread is constantly mistaken for a hardcore or "screamo" band. On the bands Formspring account, singer Josh Dies explained:

"When you look at Showbread records on amazon.com, it recommends Demon Hunter and The Almost. When you listen to a Showbread Pandora radio station, it plays Underoath and Norma Jean as similar artists. I've never listened to these types of bands or thought of Showbread as having anything in common with them musically. Perhaps because of Tooth And Nail, or the bands we've toured with, many our listeners don't realize we're aping bands like Nine Inch Nails, Flaming Lips, Nirvana and Aerosmith and that we don't have any kind of emo band on the influential palette. When the only rock music you listen to is hardcore and screamo, I suppose your basis of comparison is pretty limited.

Almost all of the songwriting (lyrically and musically) on Showbread's records are credited to singer Josh Dies. Exceptions include the song "Girls Torture Guys Cause They Can" from The Dissonance of Discontent which has lyrics and music written by Eddie Ortiz. On the same record, Ivory Mobley co-wrote the lyrics to a song called "Kaboom".

Showbread uses metaphorical references to horror movies in their lyrics, as can be seen in the titles of some songs. For instance, "Welcome to Plainfield, Tobe Hooper" from No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical refers to American film director Tobe Hooper, famous for the film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Plainfield refers to the hometown of serial killer Ed Gein. The song "George Romero Will Be at Our Wedding" from Age of Reptiles is a reference to another American director, George A. Romero, famous for such films as Night of the Living Dead. In "Dead by Dawn", the entire song deals with the Evil Dead movies. Their metaphorical use of symbolism is not limited to their lyrics, as they use the same style in interviews.