Lostprophets: The Betrayed

Usually these kinds of albums come from the likes of InMe and Hundred Reasons: Bands who have hit the peak of their popularity years back and who are trying to stem the downward spiral.

It is certainly not one befitting a band still able to shift those albums by a warehouse-load.

Whether The Betrayed is a pre-emptive strike against audience-disaffection or a confused effort caused by numerous behind the scenes dramas and tug-of-war skirmishes might be a discussion for later years, but none of this changes what The Betrayed essentially boils down to.

'Blunderbuss' would be a good word to start us on our descriptive trail, for each song on the album appears to be part of a scatter-shot approach to sound like a different band every time. So let's begin our whistle-stop tour of popular music.

Audioslave gain a clone on first track "If It Wasn't For Hate We'd Be Dead By Now" with its affected vocal sustains and sludgy guitar-riffs. "Dstryr & Dstryr" goes the way of Gallows and Refused pairing slightly yelpy hardcore-scream with an unknowingly saccharin chorus which would likely make both of those bands choke on their own vomit.

Number three "It's Not the End of the World, But I Can See It From Here" is Billy Talent all the way, end of story. "Where We Belong" opts for Tales Don't Tell Themselves-era Funeral For a Friend, an odd choice when you consider that not even Funeral For a Friend want to sound like that anymore.

We'll skip "Next Stop Atro City" since the band sound somewhat like themselves on this one. Want some jangly art-pop in the vein of The Rakes? Then look no further than the following track "For He's a Jolly Good Felon". Then "AC Ricochet" bring us the U.S pop-punk of Fall-Out Boy.

The effect tapers off towards the end of the album, finally letting the band be just themselves without the inducement of constantly genre-hopping whiplash. The only constant previously was the somewhat nauseatingly sugary choruses which somehow got forced into every song.

For genuinely interesting stabs at music though, there is only one track which bears scrutiny and that would be the closer "The Light That Burns Twice As Bright...". Built up on a subtly sumptuous guitar arpeggio, its atmosphere is shaped by the kind of ambient texture so beloved of U2 and the shoegaze genre. Of course it sounds heavenly when the percussion section makes an appearance. By the conclusion there is more adrenaline pumping through your veins than what a thousand of the songs in the ilk of what preceded it could conjure. There is perhaps a little too much restraint on show since the boys don't quite push the concepts as far as they should, but it's certainly a welcome pace-breaker from the derivative nonsense which constitutes the rest of the album.

A clear victim of an unfocused band, although a failure in album construction, it does at least show the various avenues which the band could choose to pursue when the world grows tired of the breakout post-hardcore choruses.