by Eduardo Rivadavia
First views of Suicide Party's twisted kiddy cartoons and obvious song titles might have some people charging Fort Lauderdale's Bishop with putting too much emphasis on their black-humored, often silly lyrics in place of the music itself. But that's maybe just as well since hardcore's innate sonic limitations pretty much require a band have something to say -- be it serious, comical, whatever. Bishop sure try, and whether it's anti-bad habit harangues like "Wreck," "Ingest," and "(Life Is One Big) Suicide Party," accusatory tirades such as "Old Habits," "Throwaway," and "Next Big Thing" (featuring the rather clever line "You never cared about a f**king thing but being seen and being scene"), or droll ditties like "Eat S**t" and the self-explanatory, four-second-long "Go F**k Yourself," said amusing touches definitely help to offset the excessive preaching inspired by their straight edge mentality. In fact, for a band that claims to have formed for sheer fun, Bishop spend a lot of energy getting on people's cases, and since they also don't ultimately come up with a single original sounding piece of music during this entire half-hour debut, words are really all they got -- that and the mindless adrenaline rush of the mosh pit. Average in every sense of the word.