Loma Prieta - 2008 Last City

Band : Loma Prieta

Album : Last City

Release Year : 2008

Genre : Screamo / Emo Violence

Tracklist:

1. Worn Path
2. Careful Subliminal
3. Triology I: Sick Cities
4. Trilogy II: Planar Analysis
5. Trilogy III: Fall Days
6. Armor
7. Bridges
8. David Fung
9. Script
10. Last City

Coming out of the primordial ooze in 2008 is Loma Prieta, a band whose previous releases were no more than Ampere ripoffs with a dash of Toru Okada's theatrics and melodrama - not an admirable mix. However, with the release of Last City, Loma Prieta feel like a band who have spent quite a bit of time in the lab perfecting their brand of recombination (or whatever metaphor will work with my now worn-thing analogy). The first and best part of the new mixture is that the dramatics are gone. The voice-cracking screaming has been replaced by post-pubescent distorted screaming and the propensity for slapstick variety has been reeled in. In its place is a sound that is certainly diverse and is a pastiche of many different influences, but always has a level-headed forward propulsion. Loma Prieta are not going to leap from a thrashy section to a melodic, poppy section but are going to travel across a gradient of those two sounds over an entire song, or maybe overlap the two in an interesting and original way. All of the diverse influences that give Loma Prieta their distinctive, Frankenstinian flavor are present, but they are all properly sewn together instead of tossed haphazardly into a minute-long blip coming through my speakers.

While Last City is not a genre redefining album (there are still obvious traces of Ampere and You and I here - but what better bands to rip off?), it certainly is an excellent album. Its 22-minute runtime makes good on Loma Prieta's claim that "our LP is your EP," and feels like a complete, if bite-sized unit of music. Ultimately, in a genre where recombination is being done with increasingly disappointing results, it's nice to hear a band that "gets it." Loma Prieta have produced a vital and compelling emotional hardcore album in 2008 that unabashedly invokes its predecessors while still fighting the genetic dilution that has plagued emo in recent memory.

GET IT!