Lostprophets - The Betrayed

Welsh rockers look to conquer 2010 with fourth album.


Since releasing ‘Thefakesoundofprogress’ a decade ago, Lostprophets have successfully propelled themselves to be one of the UK’s most popular bands. Since releasing ‘Liberation Transmission’ four years ago, the Welsh band have lost a very talented drummer in Ilan Rubin to Nine Inch Nails, and scrapped a whole albums worth of material produced by John Feldmann. Producing another collection of songs themselves, Lostprophets have finally returned with ‘The Betrayed’.

When you first listen to this record, one thing hits you straight away. ‘The Betrayed’ is no ‘Liberation Transmission’. The attitude and brutal delivery of ‘Start Something’ is very much there in the form of ‘DSTRYR / DSTRYR’, an absolute juggernaut of a track that thrashes like a beast for four and a half minutes with crunching guitars and without a doubt, Ian Watkins best vocal delivery to date, sounding pissed off and visceral. Then you have ‘Next Stop Atro City’ which has a more pop feeling to it, albeit only a tiny dose, completely outweighed by the clattering of drums and break neck speed which makes this a complete shot of adrenaline. In between these two songs you have the single ‘It’s Not The End Of The World, But I Can See It From Here’, following the radio friendly identikit that you would expect, and the catchy as hell ‘Where We Belong’.

It almost seems that beyond track six of ‘The Betrayed’, the band turn off the passion and start to work on nothing other than pop filler to add some bulk to the album. This may be a tad harsh, as the second half of the album has some great musical elements, one of these being a light guitar line in ‘A Better Nothing’, but in comparison to the first half of the CD, Lostprophets seriously drop the ball and completely fail to pick it back up again. ‘Streets Of Nowhere’, ‘Darkest Blue’ and the closing ‘The Light That Shines Twice As Bright’ are the three main offenders, with ‘Dirty Little Heart’ being the exception, a great pop song that would no doubt break the charts if it were ever to be marketed as a single. The closing song is perfect in its positioning, making an epic closure for the record, but before the massive climax you have a song that consists of basically nothing. The worst song by far goes to ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Felon’, purely for the awful lyrical content, making it cringeworthy.

In conclusion, ‘The Betrayed’ really is a mixed bag. You have some of Lostprophets best work in ‘DSTRYR / DSTRYR’ and ‘Next Stop Atro City’, and then you have some of their dullest in ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Felon’ and ‘A Better Nothing’. When comparing this to other bands in the same vein as Lostprophets, they’re still a country mile from the chasers, but this reputation comes with expectations, and the Welsh mob quite simply don’t live up to them.