Another release on my hometown’s September Riot Records, this time from Dubuque Iowa three piece Lost Apparitions, and while label mates Estrus called themselves progressive, Lost Apparitions are actually a much more progressive, experimental act.
Plying a sort of catchall, angular and jangly post rock/post hardcore that reminded me of instrumental acts like Sleeping In Gethsemane and Shelter Red, just with some screamed/wailed sung vocals and some injections of busy The Fall of Troy or Thursday style screamo spurts. Lost Apparitions are ambitious, but the end result is just too jumbled and fractured to have any lasting impression.
The brittle bursts of dissonance are far less satisfying than the bands tangents into acoustic, expansive ambience as heard on the tail end of better tracks like “Messages”, “I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds” or the parts of “Where All Life Ends”. And frankly these guys would actually be a passable instrumental band as the vocals are actually pretty distracting- just check out the start of the otherwise shimmery “Progress and Knowledge”.
“Hypnogogia” ends the album with some pulsing ambience, and its still a little more preferable to the actual music that Lost Apparitions display for the most part and frankly this is an band I probably wont revist again, even if on a local label.
