Band : Lost Department
Album title : Things Of Flesh And Blood
Record label : Private
Distributor : Private
Release date : Summer 2009
Release : Demo-cdR

Following the release of their 5-track self-titled 2007 demo-EP (review posted 29 June of same year – which got a “Best Albums” nomination into my year-lists, by the way), Brussels based Metalcore act Lost Department was so enthoused by the positive reactions they decided to go for a full-length release next.

But things did not exactly work out as fluently as they would’ve liked. To start with, they had some trouble getting their common schedules straight with that of the guest musicians (more about ‘em later) and producer, and then just before they were to hit the Fatsoundsstudio with engineer/producer Ace Zec, bassist Johan Charlier desides to quit. During the recordings one of the main amplifiers decides to quit as well. Not to mention borrowed cymbals that broke alongside voices! More quitting: during mixing one of the studio’s monitors comes to a breakdown, and the replacement of it took some time. Then when the band finally got their hands on the master copy (mastering done bt Alan Douches at his West West Side Studios in the US) it was unusable because of a fault on it, so the band had to wait yet again before getting a proper copy delivered from the States.

But eventually things worked out, and the 11-track resulting album (total playing time just over 46 minutes), is a delectable slabb of emotionally felt Metalcore! Emotionally? Yeah, well…the clean vocals have taken overhand on this full-length (remember the band has two singgers, the clean vocals and some growls provided by Alexander Lamahieu, and the additional grunts and screams by Wouter Liagre…now apparently also doin’ quite a bit of clean backing vocals)! From the EP, the band reworked 3 tracks (for “Sickface Sidesmile” and “A.B.F.I.A.” the changes are nominal, but the EP’s “Part One” was re-worked into a 4-part “trilogy” including the tracks “Intro” (a 76-second atmospheric but excited instrumental), “Part I: Bound To You” (4:40), “Interlude” (a calmer opening track, lasting only 2:49…hence the ‘interlude’ label, I guess), and “Part II: A Way To Defeat You”.

With the vocals being far cleaner overall (don’t be mistaken: there’s still screams, grunts & grunts) the boys have clearly gone for a slightly more commercial approach, which has stuck a chord with Belgian label Funtime Records, who’ll be releasing the band’s debut full-length in October/ November of this year! In the weeks leading to the demo’s release, the band has streamed the complete album (with a coupld of different songs per day) at myspace.com/lodep… but currently you’ll only find the album opening “Butterfly Effect”, which is actually a perfect representative for the band’s current material: highly explosive but catchy Metalcore, thanks to great musical melodies and vocal harmonies! Meanwhile…the band has replaced their bassist with one Quentin! Concerning the guests: Franky DSVD (of Channel Zero & Skitsoy fame) did backing vocals on the album’s title track, and one Lennaert Van Praet has added some Rhodes and Hammond keyboard sounds on a couple of songs!

98/100

Tony.