LostAlone’s third studio album, ‘Shapes of Screams’, is an odd creation. The first few moments of it hint at a pretty standard rock affair before it explodes into a theatrical mishmash of bells and choirs, and soaring solos and pounding riffs. All things taken separately, there is nothing wrong with these elements, but put together, the results are eccentric at best.
The first track was apparently written after watching ‘Les Miserables’, and this makes sense – the band are clearly aiming at something dramatic and showy, albeit a little formulaic. In fact, if the whole thing was the soundtrack to some sort of edgy musical, it would be perfect. However, as a standalone piece of work, it comes off as a shoddy rip-off of ‘The Black Parade’ by My Chemical Romance, with the occasional nod towards the aural enormity of Muse. The matching of features that are normally unmatched – for good reason – feels forced and strangely predictable. You can anticipate every guitar solo and vocal harmony after just a couple of songs. They even go so far as to essentially write two identical songs, ‘Hostages’ and ‘Sombre Party’, and then put them next to each other.
The main problem with ‘Shapes of Screams’ is that while it certainly is ambitious, it seems so to the point of being cringe-inducing. Take ‘Guilty’, which opens with a well-intentioned but pointless speech by a judge pronouncing someone – you guessed it! – guilty. But this begs the question: guilty of what? The same goes for ‘Crusaders’ – what is this crusade that LostAlone are banging on about? If it is meant to be the crusade against the mediocre and the dull that frontman Steven Battelle claims, then unfortunately, it falls flat. Ultimately, this is the sound of a misguided attempt to overthrow the powers that be, only to end up doing what has been done before. See, some bands can pull off cliché and cheese by being self-aware and doing it well (see The Darkness). LostAlone on the other hand sound like they genuinely believe they are “saving music”, while actually creating a tedious and repetitive, over-the-top patchwork. This record sounds like what children look like when they are first allowed to dress themselves – cute but absurd.
All of this aside, there is nothing particularly offensive about ‘Shapes of Screams’, it just doesn’t do what it sets out to do. Granted, some of it is damn catchy, and for a three-piece, some of it sounds impressively big. But this is the sort of thing that you expect from a band later on in their career, when they’ve released nine billion records and have to start doing slightly wacky things like writing rock operas to pass the time. It is difficult to see them becoming the stadium-fillers that they want to be, and unfortunately it would be no surprise if they remained a perpetual support act for bands that do everything that LostAlone are doing, except before them and better.
CHRIS MIFSUD