Review Summary: "I've got a heart that feels like it's a broken neck."
Life // Lost doesn’t really get off on the right foot. After a promising fade-in, “Anxiety” face-plants into a breakdown and this winner:
“Welcome to hell!”
It’s a little embarrassing, and looms over the rest of the song, which is actually big and flashy and guested by This Or The Apocalypse’s Rick Armellino, who has his own awkward line to deliver:
“You’ll stay on your side of this motherf-cking line, / for all time!”
By now, though, the song has built up serious momentum, and when an urgent riff lifts up the chorus, it’s apparent that Currents have stepped up their game as a unit since 2013. When that breakdown returns with Patrizio Arpaia’s unrecognizable roar dueling Armellino’s, it’s not corny and embarrassing anymore - it crushes, as breakdowns should. It’s a real feat, and it’s the kind of interesting songwriting that takes over on
Life // Lost that just wasn’t there on their debut.
Currents are local-ish to me, so I speak from experience when I say that there’s something fluid and deftly rhythmic about Currents’s music that you just don't hear in any other band around here. What might too often have felt on their previous album like a stop-start copy-paste job - stale hardcore riff here, boring metal breakdown here and here and here, digital tweaking everywhere - now flows much more naturally, and exhibits real power.
The credit goes to vocalist Patrizio Arpaio and guitarists Chris Wiseman and Ryan Castaldi. While no one is slacking, these three put in the work. You only need the noodling first minute of “Heathen,” the melodeath-lite of “Rose,” or the giddy main riff of “Euphoria” to hear it. Chug used to be Currents’ downfall, but they’ve cut the fat and focused on more expressive patterns and tones, livening up verses, solos, and breakdowns with a newfound sense of melody and a more studious approach to dissonance.
Even when they revert to the moshbait of “Sleep Paralysis,” they understand that it only takes one guitar pounding on the low strings, leaving the other free to mix it up with a dissonant line, some rapid arpeggios, or the cool siren-like bleeping toward the end of “Heathen.” There’s a sense that Currents have nailed their style and are having fun just exploring it.
Arpaio expands his range in directions he didn’t seem capable of reaching on
Victimized, making up for a pretty consistent ratio of one or two bad lines per song. The untrained bellow is gone - he roars and shrieks on
Life // Lost’s eight songs like a pro, and even calms down every so often to deliver some well-done cleans, most notably on “Rose.” He also chooses to roar and shriek through the title track, a piano piece that only takes on the rest of the band for the requisite Big Finish; and if it winds up sounding a bit too facile and overwrought, it’s at least in the right spot on the tracklist, between the gentle outro to “Rose” and the explosive opening of “Stillborn,” functioning like a passable interlude between two of the album’s noisiest songs. I’ll hand it to Currents that it’s an interesting experiment, but it doesn’t have a lot of replay value, and probably isn’t as affecting as it would have been if approached more traditionally.
Life // Lost doesn’t quite stick the landing, either. “Derelict” is a great song up until the album's other guest vocalist, Matthew Youkhana of rap-metal band Devastator, enters. You can see the problem right away. He’s not technically bad, although his lyrics are even more wanting than Arpaio’s - “mother, f-ck what you think,” “a gat to your teeth, cock back and I squeeze, bitch,” and the unfortunate last words on the album, “Lights out, bitch, / I’mma shine, be quiet” - but his overall tone and style don’t mesh with Currents to the same degree that tortured screams don't work over piano. Both are symptomatic of the sort of growing pains you expect of a sophomore album.
There was room to improve on
Victimized, and there’s still some room on
Life // Lost, but as they demonstrate repeatedly, Currents is willing to expand. Some pacing issues and a couple of bad creative calls are par for this stage of their career, and easy to overlook when so many other areas show this level of refinement. Arpaio’s departure from the band will leave a hole - their last show together will be June 19 of this year, as he goes off to pursue other passions - but if they choose well, it’s as much an opportunity as the prospect of a third album.
