Blacked Out (Single 2019)
Lost Zone
Alternative Metal Hard Rock
From the beautiful town of Merano in South Tyrol comes a band. They consider themselves as Alternative Rock and Metal with Nu Metal and Metalcore influences in the tradition of icons like Linkin Park, Thirty Seconds To Mars and Bring Me The Horizon.
Basically Lost Zone just consists of three members plus a live support guitarist. What is really fascinating is that the young musicians produce all their music themselves. Obviously their focus is on a full sound experience, which leaves space for dynamics and can support their heavy songs when turned up loudly.
That is how their single “Blacked Out” works. For the start, they use a common effect where the music is subdued in the beginning and then hits in brutally with the drums like e.g. Dark Age used it. To give it a deeper dimension, we hear something like synthesizer keys in the background. The verses with soft high singing in the beginning remind of Black Peaks.
The voice of Florian Mahlknecht is complex, as the verse then gets pitched lower and later he is screaming as well. In the strong refrain, the melody is catchy and makes think of acts like Korn, combining powerful riffs with a vocal line made to stay in one’s mind. Then it gets even more heavy in a broiling bellowing bridge, before the chorus is repeated two more times followed by an outro.
In the video by Samuel Heuberger Reichert, the band delivers a mighty performance. Fluorescent tubes bring an atmosphere like at a Raketkanon gig and change the color for the bridge part. As second layer, the camera introduces to a dancing scene in a factory flooded by light.
For “The Acoustic Sessions” EP, the group re-recorded “Blacked Out” in an unplugged arrangement. In this version, it even gets a Skate Pop Punk feeling and strings replace the keys. Lost Zone know what they want, the hard and the soft way, just as when we listen to “In Your Honor” or “Deliverance/Damnation”.