USER HOSTILE

A Lonely Crowd's debut album starts out with what sounds like a fairly inoffensive old-timey number, finishes with a palette-cleansing alt-metal rant, and in between visits a wide range of eccentric musical territories. It's let down a little in the consistency department, partially due to the wide range of genres the band explore (I could do without the alt metal sendoff Skyscraper) and partly because the band were undergoing a bad case of Revolving Door Syndrome when it came to their vocalists - the result being that two different lead vocalists and a smattering of guests appear on the album, giving the band a rather faceless presence.

What saves the album is the group's competent avant-prog performances which is reminiscent of trying to fuse RIO with modern day heavy prog to create a strange hybrid. User Hostile is not an album I expect to return to regularly, but if they can get a stable lineup and focus more on their strengths A Lonely Crowd may prove to be an intriguing new feature of the musical landscape.