It's been three years for
Mudvayne, three years when metal started to reject its "rap" and "nu" prefixes. At first,
Lost and Found reflects that realignment. Vocalist
Chad Gray and his mates have nixed the nicknames and makeup for their third Epic full-length, and they try to focus on songs instead of heavy music shtick. However, they equate getting real with the melodramatic plead that interrupts the razor-sharp main part of "Choices," and
Gray can't overcome lines like "IMN"'s "No one/No one could ever understand/This life." The song is about suicide, which is very serious. But yelling "F*ck this sh*t!" over thudding rhythms just isn't very powerful anymore. They nail it on opener "Determined" -- one of
Mudvayne's all-time strongest tracks, it's a fist-swinging blast of modernized thrash. But
Lost and Found soon falls into the familiar busting no-one-understands-me lyrics and matching moments of refreshing rawness to stretches of stereotypical "corporate metal," a non-genre that's risen up to accept loud rock refugees and the harder side of post-grunge. The energy in "Determined" and "Just" is sapped by the meandering "TV Radio" and "Fall into Sleep," and ultimately
Mudvayne get lost between thrash and diluted
Slipknot devotion. [This is the "clean" version of this release.] ~ Johnny Loftus