Survive by Show Me The Body album review by Adam Williams for Northern Transmissions

Loma Vista Recordings

8

Survive

Show Me The Body

Words by Adam Williams

Quarantine, isolation, call it whatever you want, over the past 12 months we’ve all been detached from our friends, our families and society in general – particularly in a physical space. This enforced seclusion is something that provoked New York noisemongers, Show Me The Body into action; with gigs taken away for the foreseeable future, the three piece had to reassess how they’d communicate with their peers. A product of the last year has manifested in the guise of the ‘Survive’ EP; three tracks that crystallise the group’s unrelenting assault via hip-hop, hardcore punk and noise, that documents the feeling of frustration and disenchantment.

Speaking broadly about their traversal through Covid times, the band have reflected “during this isolation we had to recalibrate. Recalibrate both how we exist as a band and how we cultivate power within our community. Our live performance is not just a moment for us, it’s our weapon, our language, and our ceremony. Without it, we had to reconfigure how we interact with our community. We established CORPUS headquarters. With our team, we started CORPUS Family, a branch of CORPUS focused on community initiatives; Burning World Book Club, a clothing drive, and a studio residency. We are preparing CORPUS Self-Defense initiatives as well as open jam sessions as soon as safety will allow for it. We built a studio in our headquarters. Survive is the first project to be written and recorded top to bottom in the CORPUS studio. The songs deal with spiritual and physical isolation, as well as staying ready and preparing for the next time we come together.”

‘Survive’ EP finds the trio battle-ready, a tense ball of fury, praying for a sweet release. Confrontational and combative, the EP kicks off with the broken noise of ‘Rubberband’; a track that commences with the sound of distorted electronics and beats before expanding to a guttural bludgeon that straddles the no-man’s land between metal and hardcore. The theme of confinement crops up via Julian Cashwan Pratt’s gravelled, blackened growl “I’m a mouse inside a maze”. While the bleak “I wasn’t meant for this earth/understand me/it don’t make it better or worse” illustrates the mental fatigue of the past year. Taking on a Deftone-esque grind ‘People on TV’, is a death crawl through grinding distortion and nightmarish, horror movie noises that eventually unravel like billowing clouds of acrid smoke. The macabre lyric “when’s it your turn to die” conveys the track’s malevolent core. Capping off the short collection of songs is the EP’s title track, the moment where SMTB merge the feral energy of hardcore punk with the elastic bounce of hip-hop. Pratt’s vocals take on a gnarled, demonic angle, further fuelling the track’s chaotic fire. “I never cry/watching pigs die” bellows Pratt, with a conviction of a man who’s grown disenfranchised with the way his community has been supported by those that should serve and protect.

If ‘Survive’ is Show Me The Body “staying ready and preparing for the next time we come together”, like some kind of Rocky-esque training montage, you’d better believe when the pandemic is over, the NYC outfit will be leaner, meaner and fitter than ever before.