Demos

Demo Review: Lost Without Cause

[Region: Herts]
[Label: Unsigned]

Lost Without Cause, Watford’s trio of punk-pop rockers, have presumably had a real bash at replicating that feisty My Chemical Romance sound but have also managed to suck up a lot of what Green Day and, in particular, Placebo were producing early in their careers. Unfortunately a disjointed recording process at three different studios has let their full-length demo down. They’ve blazed ahead anyway and optimistically titled it ‘A Life On Burning Pages’.

The first three tracks help us compare the different levels of quality each studio has brought to the melting pot. The clever, switching, radio channel opening of ‘Attack!’, recorded at Eastwood Studios, moves into clean, but weak guitars, distant scratched bass and tinny drums. Fortunately the pinpoint vocals are clear and precise and allow the catchy heart of the song some room to hit home. ‘False Beliefs In You’ was put together at RMH Studios and is sounding far more-balanced with Andy Holland’s echoing, dirtied guitar combining well with Simon Marks’ pinging bass to jimmy along the groove nicely. Rosetta Holmes’ drums here are crisper, more vital, with particularly effective taut tom rolls. And then we have ‘Write Your Own Ending’ at CDS Studios. A messy guitar balance finds the bass and lead crashing into each other creating a loose-sounding backfill which washes the drums away. The vocals come out fairly clean again but are left standing there like Billy No-Mates.

In general, the songs just don’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s particularly noticeable on the ballad, ‘Missing You’, which is played on clean guitar exposing the true quality of vocal and rhythmic timing which fall far short of anything worth repeated plays. It’s hard to write anything so negative when a band has obviously spent so much time, energy and effort putting this together off their own backs. They have a hefty number of MySpace friends and if just 1% attends their live shows they’ll be good gigs to get along to where the band will probably be sounding at their best.

Even on the demo, though, there is something to cheer as ‘Epilepsy’ lifts the whole CD with ringing, cascading guitars and gently simmering bass. Over this the vocal features heavy echo and sits within the music rather than standing out over it. The mix on this track is far superior and to be honest it’s a shining beacon from within the gloom. More of the same on their next effort with hopefully some time in a quality studio should see them emerge with something they can truly be proud of.

For fans of: Placebo, My Chemical Romance, Brand New
Band links = Lost Without Cause

Search Amazon for this CD!

John’s review also appears in Music-Zine.

Bookmark to:

Previous & Next