Band:	Lost Society
Album:	If The Sky Came Down
Style:	Metalcore, Groove thrash metal
Release date:	October 2022

01. 112
02. What Have I Done
03. (We Are The) Braindead
04. Stitches
05. Awake
06. Underneath
07. Creature
08. Hurt Me
09. If The Sky Came Down
10. Suffocating

What Have I Done, indeed.

It's rare to be presented with such a trainwreck of an album, one where you can hear all the momentum the band had to this point derail as the record plays out; If The Sky Came Down is a spectacle for all the wrong reasons.

While I had reservations going into this album after the poor No Absolution, I had hoped Lost Society would learn from their mistakes and come back stronger. Alas, if anything, the band double down on their flaws and minimise the bright spots to the listener's detriment.

It would be unfair to not point out that the album does have some, though limited, redeeming features. If The Sky Came Down is well produced, which would be a huge asset to better material. The first five tracks have passable choruses and there is some good guitar work scattered across the record (the solo to "Hurt Me" is alright), but it is not prevalent enough to salvage the album. At a push, I would say the opening duo of "112" and "What Have I Done", along with "Awake", are average, listenable, but nothing I'd be in a rush to listen to again.

Without hyperbole, that is it in terms of the positives that can be derived from the album. The rest of the album is a tangle of imitation instead of inspiration, middling-to-boring tracks that sound like brainstorming sessions gone wrong and songs that lack any spark to them. How is this album so bad, you ask yourself? Well, listen to "Creature" and "Hurt Me" and you will hear the sounds of a band knowing what direction they want to move in, but lacking the details of how to do it. Perhaps as an over-correction, Lost Society looked to others for inspiration, but copied others notes rather than learning from them. "(We Are The) Braindead" is just Slipknot's "Eyeless", while the following track "Stiches" could easily fit onto a Ill Niño album.

It's clear when listening to the album that Lost Society are positioning themselves for metal/rock's mainstream, to cross over from the fringes of thrash and into a more accessible sound with a wider audience. Songs like the title track and "Awake" seem built for radio airplay; while this shouldn't be held against them, what should be held against them is that the tracks are so boring and vapid that they copy the worst aspects of radio metal.

In their rush to strive for the mainstream, If The Sky Came Down copies the formula others have used before, but doesn't add any personality or positive qualities of the band's own to the mix. Lost Society have the talent to be a decent band, but the path they've set for themselves unfortunately doesn't play to their strengths; while they could turn things around for themselves in the future, they'll have to do so with this albatross around their necks.