Lost Dreams – Blinded By Rage

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Several years and five albums into their career, Austria’s Lost Dreams are far from the premier league of melodeath bands but have certainly refined their art nonetheless. The band’s sound can be characterized as having heavy, slightly groovy riffs with some held-back Gothenburg-esque guitar riffs, not enough to heavily feel like a Swedish death metal band but just enough to identify them as classic melodeath. Blinded By Rage is pretty much everything as expected, a solid sounding record with plenty of fast and heavy riffs, mixed in with some anthemic sounding slower and melodic moments. Singer Stefan Traunig’s vocal delivery is of particular note, recalling singers such as Bjorn ‘Speed’ Strid (Soilwork) and Christian Älvestam (ex-Scar Symmetry, Solution .45) in the sheer breadth of his vocal styles – large and heavy, screechy, clean, ominous, exactly what a melodeath singer needs to be capable of. Whilst the album for the most part is good and dependable genre stuff, it does sometimes feel a bit same-old, with nothing about it making the album rise above being a decent slab of melodeath. That might be all Lost Dreams seem to want though – and closing the album with a heavier but otherwise very authentic, note-for-note cover of Soilwork’s Nerve (a very recent song for them at that) rather agrees with this observation. A good effort all things considered, just not anything that will change people’s perceptions of the genre.

Written by James Donovan
More: 2011, Albums, Death Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Lost Dreams