The music business, especially the modern-rock division, is an exhausting scene. Between illegal downloading, heavy promotional pressures and the nanoseconds-long attention span of the MTV crowd, rock artists are forced to conjure up magic tricks of imaging to attract increasingly fickle listeners. The Lost Prophets are well aware of this, and thus saturate their third CD, Liberation Transmission, in enough fancy artwork and fashion statements to put even My Chemical Romance to shame. Unfortunately, the music Liberation Transmission delivers can't live up to the agenda its imaging pushes, and the record falls miserably flat.
As a concept band, the Lost Prophets actually do rather well for themselves. Their CD cover proclaims "Nobis Pro Lemma Vobis" (meaning "for us, for them, for you") against a backdrop of gargoyles and red ink splattered to look like blood. The band members, adorned in sunglasses and tattoos, pose, unsmiling, under layers of perfectly dyed and parted hair. And the lyrics to each song, printed in an appropriately gothic font, are splayed out over four pages of German prison records watermarked into the CD jacket. While the packaging of Liberation Transmission is impressive, the band doesn't succeed much more than that. Underneath their carefully designed smoke and mirrors, the Lost Prophets are a mediocre band at best. At worst, they are an offensively presumptuous act that dictates a philosophy without producing the quality music needed to back it up.
The band's relentless diatribe begins with "Everyday Combat," which likens life to a series of wars fought over booze, brawls and broads. While the song's formula is classic punk rock, its drudging sound certainly won't be starting any riots. Most of the record's subsequent tracks, with stale guitar riffs and lifeless melodies, fall into the same dull category. Some songs are so studied that they even make parodies of themselves. Armed with lines like "there's no pride to be found/ when you follow sheep around," the band takes a jab at the music industry on "A Town Called Hypocrisy." In the same vein, "The New Transmission" is an attack on all things superficial, proclaiming "everyone says the same old things." Shouted ungracefully over power chords, however, such lines have little effect without originality or inventiveness.
Equally unoriginal are tracks like "Broken Hearts, Torn Up Letters, and the Story of a Lonely Girl," which attempts to hide its banality with a dramatic title and voice tricks from lead singer and lyricist Ian Watkins. The same applies to "Everybody's Screaming!!!," a song title that apparently requires three exclamation points to distract listeners from the mind-numbingly mundane sound it actually offers. As Watkins screams that he's "sick of working all week for people [he] can't stand," the band's credibility plummets to the ranks of other modern-rock bands who value themselves as messiahs for the disaffected youth of the world (such as Nickleback and, God forbid, Creed.)
Despite its misguided sermonizing, Liberation Transmission isn't entirely hopeless. U2-inspired guitars and a soaring melody lift first single "Rooftops" to pure pop-rock ecstasy, and "Can't Stop, Got A Date With Hate" is a clever commentary on life tainted by cynicism. When the band shifts its focus from the state of world affairs to the state of a broken relationship, as in "Can't Catch Tomorrow," its sound makes more sense.
Otherwise, Liberation Transmission drones on at an exhaustingly loud volume without striking any emotional chords. The record is far too prepped and primed to leave any lasting impressions. Credit is due to the band's A&R department for creating some stunning visual effects, but the effects from the music underneath the imaging are nonexistent. The Lost Prophets, who apparently are also lost on the meaning of irony, have created an entirely forgettable record that preaches but cannot perform.
Grade: 3 out of 5
