lord of the lost fears

Released: 08 March 2010 Label: Out of Line

Every now and again a new band comes long that makes you sit up and get excited. When Lord of the Lost previewed their first video on the internet last year, a tingle ran down my spine and I prayed that this was just a taste of things to come. Here, at last, was potentially a band to fill a huge commercial goth-metal shaped whole in my current musical life. Something that wasn’t harking back to the past, but was new and innovative and current whilst taking the best of the old goth guitar sounds and industrial drumbeats, and was ready to drop kick it all into 2010.

The band was formed last year by Chris Harms, who will be no stranger to those who know their German alternative music. A creative maelstrom, Chris is also better known in his role as The Lord, guitarist in Hamburg-based glamrockers The Pleasures, and as vocalist and front man in the dark electro synth pop outfit, Unterart. Along with Sebsta (guitar), Sensai (guitar), Class (bass), Bo (guitar) and Any (drums), Lord of the Lost is the latest creation for the release of his ever-evolving musical creativity, and an outlet for his need to write more serious love songs.

The album begins with opening track Last Words in true gothic style with church organ and choir type vocals before a pounding more industrial drumbeat kicks in. Normal vocals alternate with screaming ones to set the scene for the album. The second track, Break Your Heart, shows the more commercial side of the band, with a catchy as hell chorus.

Third up is Dry the Rain, and a song that no old school goff of the late 80s or fans of key changes can surely resist? Switching between the deep velvety goth vocals and the louder pained growls, the song is a catchy masterpiece that just is asking to be put on repeat.

Beautiful piano parts in tracks such as The Measure of All Things balance the album against the Rammstein-esque pounding of the harder industrial tracks such as Prologue, yet it all gels nicely as one album, with a distinctive and original sound, and no filler track in sight.

Till Death Us Do Part is an epic slower track that has you swaying from side to side and humming along with the pretty melodies until the absolute anguished bloodcurdling screams kick in at the end, reminiscent of the ending of The Sisters of Mercy’s Some Kind of Stranger.

Nothing Words Can Say has the most wonderful tuneful guitars, goth bordering 80s rock, and the final track Sooner or Later finishes off the album in epic style, a massive thirteen minutes of a gorgeous piano backed love song which evolves into hugely agonised distorted vocals.

Lord of The Lost’s debut album is an absolute breath of fresh air in an era of Within Temptation wannabes and Cradle of Filth ridiculousness. Alternative yet commercial, passionate and anguished yet polished and well produced. Hard and pounding, but also soft and mesmerising. So many contrasts on one album, yet it works perfectly. I make no apologies for raving about this; this album made me cry, and Chris Harms is a musical genius of our generation.


by Lynn Wyeth