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Only one year has passed since the release of the LORD OF THE LOST debut album, “Fears!”, and now, in April 2011, they come back with a sophomore album that is truly worthy of your attention: “Antagony” (out on April-01 with Out of Line). A 15-track album, “Antagony” proposes clearcut sound, well-defined and engaging lyrics, and a sound on its way to become a trademark. Do not miss LORD OF THE LOST’s feature on the cover of the April issue of Sonic Seducer, in a haphazard duo with MINA HARKER.

Read Viva Music’s review of the Lord of the Lost debut album, “Fears” here.

LORD OF THE LOST’s new album is not, in many ways, a process, as it many times happens with bands who define their sound with initial releases. The pungent and charismatic sound of the album resembles in many ways what one should expect from artists with some tens of years of relentless studio and stage activity. The commanding beginning of gothic rock magnificence, “Preludium: About Love, Death & the Devil” is a masterpiece, and a great induction for the ensuing tracks. Elegiac only to the point where it is programmed to muster enough feeling to irrupt, “Preludium” opens the way for the manifesto track “We Are the Lost”, a compelling presence on the album, and, what is more, one that defines the philosophy of the band’s persona: a psychologically tormented and morally abused crowd of lost souls, trapped in the precipice that opens up between the world of living and dead. “We Are the Lost” is a highly creative track, but does not stray on the way to experimentalism, and this is why it comes up as a well-wrought and expert track.

The single advance of this album, “Sex on Legs” adds to the above imagery sexiness and seduction – which, let’s be honest, we need to see more in gothic rock. Not a scintilla of glamour clutters the essence of the song, it stands erect, it motions, to the effect it triumphs. LORD OF THE LOST’s creative process is not, however, stalled to just these initial compositions, since equipollent tracks, such as the ensuing “Fragmenting Façade” come up next.

If so far we have been induced a certain ambient, it is up to “Fragmenting Façade” to shift patterns, change the tune, and sound different, and at the same time the dead spit of LORD OF THE LOST previous productions. “Prison”, a somewhat more accelerated track, opens up and delivers the same audacity of sound and gallantry of vocals.

“Epiphany” is, for what VIVA MUSIC’s editorial interest counts, a defining track for the album. It flows naturally and represents an outstanding display of musicianship and creativity. A track worth a fair number of repeat plays, “Love Is Not Enough” is iconic, and definitely a track up to the challenge to please and seduce, in its ambivalent use of melancholic and overexcited vocals.

The track that gives the album title, “Antagony (The Truth Is Written Between the Lines)” continues the series of daring creativity with a track that evinces all the needed signals of a memorable tune. While it is fairly easy to see, taking into account the production of their debut album, “Fears!”, where they come from, LORD OF THE LOST prove, via this track and equally so via the entire album, that they are a persistent presence on the gothic scene, with, in their own words, “dark emotive rock”.

The same feeling is carried on by “From the Cradle to the Grave” and “Undead or Alive”, tracks that are convincing and entertaining in their use of apocalyptic imagery and otherworldly feats. If immortality played a role in this album, in which the true antagonism is played out by individual consciousnesses trapped between two equally scorching sates, then it is up to “Son of the Dawn” to create an eloquent fusion of the above elements and provide the appropriate soundtrack to what the end of the world can look, or better yet, sound like.

Further tracks, such as “Inferior” and “Seven Days of Anavrin” are inclusive of a wonderful vision rendered majestically in sound, a quality that does not seem to dilute as the album advances – a sign of its creative power and prowess. “Revelation 13:18”, the track that sets the original Bible quote about the number of the beast against ecclesiastical music and symphonic and gothic rock wedges in the same perfect construction of the album. Definitely a good pick for a future ‘best of’ LORD OF THE LOST release, “Revelation 13:18” has an overpowering pace, and boomerangs between holiness and decay artfully and diligently. “Reprise: Sober”, the closing track of the album, comes from the same vein as the “Preludium”, demystifying and getting back in touch with human feelings that were wrapped up in cosmological, esoteric and mythological matter of the album imagery.

Tracklist:

LORD OF THE LOST Myspace
LORD OF THE LOST Facebook
LORD OF THE LOST Reverbnation
Label: Out of Line Music