Review Summary: At its worst, good. At its best, breathtaking.
When an album opens with lines like
"All my life leads to the same old thing/And all my dreams leave me with broken wings", one might expect to forget it all straight afterwards. But when they're being sung in an impressive soprano over some atmospheric guitars and spaced-out drums, things become a lot more engaging. “Fuel” is a good example not only of what to expect from Lo-Pro’s self-titled first effort, but of what the band’s sound is like in general;
Lo-Pro set down a sonic template that, for the most part, the band has always stayed close to. Even if none of their later releases turned out to be as memorable as this one, their brand of hard yet radio-friendly rock brought them through the decline of post-grunge and won them a few fans in the process, so it seems they were onto something good.
The main thing that sparked my interest in Lo-Pro was the band's background. Pete Murray and Neil Godfrey's previous band, the admittedly weirdly-named Ultraspank, had always been a favourite of mine, having released two albums that received nowhere near as much attention as I felt they should have. When I heard that Murray and Godfrey had gone on to form a new band after Ultraspank collapsed, featuring members of Godsmack (deal with it) and Snot to boot, it instantly went on my to-do list to check them out. It's a good question, though: would I like Lo-Pro as much as I do had I not liked Ultraspank so much?
Actually, I probably would. For one thing, Lo-Pro and Ultraspank sound almost nothing alike (save for Lo-Pro's third album,
Disintegration Effect, a hit-and-miss attempt to return to the Ultraspank sound). For another, Lo-Pro's music is definitely solid enough to hold up by itself. Despite being part of a wave of ubiquitous 2000s alt-rock groups (tellingly, they were discovered by Staind's Aaron Lewis), it's still fairly easy to pick these guys out of the crowd.
Pete Murray's vocals are the main reason for this. The uncomplicated alt-rock songwriting gives Murray's pipes a lot of time in the spotlight; almost every track on this record is a crash course in how to write haunting, intense vocals. The lyrics aren’t always the most groundbreaking things ever penned, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, but Murray’s voice is more than enough to redeem things. This man could sing the proverbial phone book, and it'd still sound incredible.
Lo-Pro’s main flaw, although it doesn’t wreck the album completely, is that it has its moments of sameness; there are some songs that might have you thinking you’ve heard them before. While you could arguably make this complaint about any genre, it won’t win them any favours with those who deride mid-2000s alternative rock and post-grunge for being formulaic. There are a couple of standout tracks here to mix things up, however: “1Day”, which borders on industrial rock with its driving rhythms, and “Bombz”, a Deftones-esque closer featuring some of the most depressing lyrics I’ve ever heard from Murray. If none of the other tracks capture your interest, maybe these will.
You can tell this album was written when Lo-Pro was still finding its own sound, given how clearly some influences show through ("Oblivion" could've come straight off Radiohead’s
The Bends, for instance). But as a debut offering, it stands up remarkably strongly. With a record like this under their belts, there was a lot of curiosity as to what Lo-Pro would do next. Sadly, due to complications with their label, it would be another six years before they released any new music, with the
Letting Go EP in 2009 followed by second album
The Beautiful Sounds of Revenge the next year. All the same,
Lo-Pro stands firm as both a top-notch alternative rock/metal album in its own right, and a landmark in the career of some very talented but underappreciated musicians. That they never reached the heights of this album again is unfortunate, yet understandable.
