When the year 2007 rolled around, Europe continued to seriously dominate the death metal/black metal field (something it had been doing since the '90s) as well as goth metal, progressive metal, and the power metal revival movement. But one area where the United States remained quite dominant was the metalcore/hardcore realm; the vast majority of metalcore or screamo bands that emerged in the early to mid-2000s were American bands. There are exceptions to that rule, certainly -- and one of them is Japan's
Lost Eden, who offer by-the-book screamo on
Cycle Repeats. Screamo (which shouldn't be confused with either traditional metalcore or technical metalcore and math metal) goes by several other names, including post-hardcore, melodic hardcore, and emotional metalcore. But whatever name one uses, screamo has experienced big-time saturation; the style has been beaten to death by a ton of bands that sound alike, and
Lost Eden don't bring anything out of the ordinary to screamo on this 2006 recording/2007 release. The familiar screamo elements -- lots of swirling guitars, tortured introspection, angry screaming vocals contrasted with clean sensitive vocals -- are very much a part of the totally predictable
Cycle Repeats. And once you get past the fact that
Lost Eden are from Japan, there is nothing that sets them apart from countless American screamo bands that follow the very same musical recipe. Of course, not every band that comes along is obligated to be strikingly original; most musicians in any genre are going to be followers rather than leaders, and that isn't necessarily problematic because a lot of albums that are highly derivative are also inspired and quite enjoyable. But
Lost Eden, for all their bombast, never sound truly inspired. Bottom line: the problem with
Cycle Repeats isn't so much that it is derivative as the fact that the performances and material, although generally competent, simply aren't very memorable. ~ Alex Henderson