LostAlone are perhaps trying a little too hard to achieve the commercial success that they think they deserve.

Derby’s permanent small concert circuit boys LostAlone get ideas above their station on the progressive yet flawed ‘Shapes Of Screams’ where despite their best efforts, the album is tainted by delusions of grandeur.

Aiming at breaking out of small venues and tasting greater things is an admirable goal and yet if you invariably sound like a garage version of My Chemical Romance or Muse, it becomes all that more difficult… nay impossible.

When they get it right, as on the melodic Metallic Punk of ‘Scarlet Letter Rhymes’ or the harmony tinged ‘Apathy’, it ticks all the right boxes and yet elsewhere it all feels slightly contrived; no more so than on the MCR influenced ‘Requiem’ or the awkward ‘Sombre Party’ (complete with Brian May style guitar solo), leaving the feeling that perhaps LostAlone are perhaps trying a little too hard to achieve the commercial success that they think they deserve.

Mike Newdeck