Signal Lost - Prosthetic Screams CD Review

I’m not sure if many people have even heard of the bands Deathreat, Balance of Terror, Severed Head of State, orJ-Church, but if you have then you should know that Signal Lost is made up of ex-members of the aforementioned bands. I also doubt a lot of people have heard of Signal Lost, but that isn’t really a surprise since this is an album that is permeated with an underground anarcho-punk crust. If it was popular, it would lose its soul.

Feeling much like a throwback to the early days of AFI and even earlier to the days of the Wipers or Black Flag, Prosthetic Screams is a little more than 20 minutes of blasting female fronted melodic punk. Now don’t get confused when I say female fronted melodic punk. This isn’t some lame-ass wannabe Paramore. This is more akin to Tsunami Bomb but with a much more classically styled punk approach.

Despite the classic structure of many of the songs, a lot borrowing quite heavily from AFI, there is a significant amount of edgy melody. Take “Second Voice” for example. It’s straight up punk, feeling like an early Rise Against track, but even with the abrasive nature of the song, it is written with a killer melody to carry it through. The strong vocal performance also helps, being both abrasive enough to remind you that this girl is pissed off, yet moody enough to not be ignored.

The album does falter in a few areas, however, mainly when it comes to the differentiation in the songwriting approach the band takes from track to track… or lack thereof. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know that the dirty punk of yesterday isn’t know for being diverse, but when a band is staring down the history of punk greats and emulating their sound, it helps to do something somewhat different. If not, then why should anyone stop listening to The Avengers in favor of Signal Lost? Still, this is a respectable release that’s true enough to its punk roots to make it feel real and remind you of those good ol’ days of playing music because you loved it, not because you wanted to see how many MySpace friends you could get.