SHOW YOUR FACE, Unleash (2011, self-released)
The skull:
When I was a kid, sometimes in the course of my roughhousing I would knock down and break one of the dozens of decorative skulls that festooned our home (and which I assume are common in most American households), on discovery of which my mother would spank me and yell, rhetorically, “Do you think skulls grow on trees?” Well, if only I had this cover to answer her with, I could have increased the severity of the beating by at least 200%!
The music:
I always think of tough-guy metalcore as being a distinctly American phenomenon, with maybe some Germans getting involved. But never Greeks! Greeks should be making weirdo black metal or cheap-sounding prog metal or maybe retro true metal. It’s what they do best! Not that Show Your Face are bad at metalcore. They’re pretty good, actually, and their vision of metalcore is for sure a lot less floofy than the American standard. There are no clean vocals (although there are a few sorta “sung” moments, but the voice remains tough), and the lyrics don’t seem to be overly concerned with the singer’s pain. Show Your Face deal with pain, but only the kind they intend to inflict on other motherfuckers. Really, “metalcore” might be a bad label, but I don’t know what else to call this sort of thing. It’s somewhere between every modern descendent of Pantera and Hatebreed, with some melodic Swedish influences thrown in for good measure (without ever going full In Flames.) It’s all very well done, but still quite boring. About the only song that really did anything for me is the brief instrumental “Minus 56,” with its odd syncopated grooves and slinky tapped guitar line. For those 2 minutes, I’m almost willing to believe that Show Your Face could grow up and our of their adolescent rage. Maybe if I were a lot younger and considerably more angry, this kind of music would appeal to me, but as it is, I have very little interest in fucking shit up these days.
— Friar Johnsen
