When I listen to A Life Once Lost, a death metal band, it\u2019s my ears that are being killed. So many metal bands think that screaming lyrics makes them heavier than the competition, and ALOL falls into that trap. If it weren\u2019t for the intense attention to detail in the band\u2019s music, this release would get filed in my \u201ccandidate for coaster\u201d pile, next to Meat Loaf, Linkin Park, and Korn.<\/p>\n
ALOL have amazing musical integrity, but that\u2019s the only thing they have going for them. Certainly, I\u2019ve read more interesting lyrics than \u201cPain And Panic.\u201d Sure, vocalist Robert Meadows is screaming, \u201cTonight you are going to suffer \/ And I will be the last glimpse of anything you see\u2026\u201d with intensity, but balanced with the meandering, unfocused \u201cMaybe I\u2019m neurotic or just wrong in general \/ Maybe I should concede\u201d in \u201cVulture,\u201d I\u2019m unimpressed. The speaker in the lyrics of any band is the expert on whatever they are talking about in the song. The wishy-washy attitude weakens these lines and seems contradictory to the down-your-throat delivery. Such an intense delivery shouldn\u2019t be weakened by a Charlie Brown attitude in the writing. There could have been much better lyrics (my suggestion: \u201cI\u2019m neurotic \/ I\u2019m always wrong\u201d) where the speaker is more forceful. <\/p>\n
The highlight on this release, both musically and lyrically, has to be track ten, \u201cGhosting.\u201d This cut captures what the entire release should be sounding like. After enduring the previous nine tracks, I was used to the screaming and actually understood what Meadows was so peeved about. He declares, \u201cI am impatient and hard to please…When this body lay lifeless, don\u2019t patronize me by \/ Insisting this was all done because of you.\u201d The hostility of the speaker towards the subject is the highlight of this release.<\/p>\n
If I close my eyes, I can see A Life Once Lost on stage with sweat dripping as vocalist Meadows screeches his lyrics with intensity. Drummer Justin Graves is intense with hostility as he moves his hands around his set, while guitarists Robert Carpenter and Douglas Sabolick are frantically playing their riffs in conjunction with bassist Nicholas Frasca. Onstage, in a live environment, ALOL are killing the crowd. I just wish listening to this wouldn\u2019t kill my ears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8591],"rating":[5616],"class_list":["post-42021","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-a-life-once-lost","rating-rating-d"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42021"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42021"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}