Their website says nothing about how they came together, how long they’ve been a band, or gives any other insight into the history of Soapbox, though it doesn’t have a miniature bio for each of the four members, two of which are kindergarten teachers. Who Soapbox are, though, are Swedes from the land of Blindside and Selfmindead. With a similar sound, as well.
Soapbox, in America, is on Solid State Records, the best known record label in the Christian metal scene. The album was released on May 8, 2001.
The album
A Divided Man starts, from the first second, with banging snares and strumming guitar before breaking down into a bass-dominated riff and high-pitched screams: “It was a hollow surprise/ In my world no one dies.”
The song, “Gone,” goes on to be a good track with a pretty distinct early Blindside sound (there’s probably a very good chance they tour together) and some nice vocals, though you can’t decipher them too awful much without the book (where all lyrics are printed for the curious).
Unfortunately, the album tapers off immediately. Much of the album is very easy to ignore. One moment you’re on track two, modestly tapping your foot, and the next thing you know it’s track number eight and you don’t remember a single thing you’ve heard.
There are sixteen tracks here, many of them unmoving and quite plain. The singer doesn’t really offer anything of power and most the guitar riffs are more a droning noise like a pissed hornet’s nest than an artful collection of notes.
There are a few fun tracks mixed in if they don’t slip you by. “Brain,” the ninth track, has some nice riffs and rhythms. The lyrics, however, are limited and just repeated through the song. “Smorgasbord” finally slips down off the punk rock rhythm they stretched through the entire album and has its own pace about it, which helps it stick out a bit from some of the other monotonous songs on the album.
The album’s shortcoming is the fast pace it maintains throughout the entire album, never stopping to think that maybe, just maybe, a band can play songs along different tempos to freshen their sound. Every song bursts forward with a relatively fast punk rock tempo that the guitars refuse to let loose. Fans of punk rock and perpetually fast metal may enjoy this album, in fact may even call it one of the best things on the scene, but for this fellow who detests punk rock music, Soapbox is little more than a persistent nuisance.
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