Lost Breed - World Of Power

The history of US biker/doom rock band Lost Breed has been written previously by myself on these pages, so we won’t go there this time. Fans of doom orientated metal take note though - this is a surprising find! Two tracks ‘Desert Fox’ and ‘No Hope’ were released on the bands 1989 single, although the remainder are a collection of early recordings that featured Gary Tocco (Blind Legion) who sang once Wino left the band. The album was eventually shelved and when the band got signed to Hellhound in ’93, some of the tracks were re-written. Not all the tracks will feature consistency, the band had an issue keeping a permanent vocalist in the early days and thus you may hear this throughout some of the tracks, the liner notes/credits also explain this, although on all but two tracks, Gary Tocco is the main vocalist). I like the sound of the gig they talk about attending in the notes too!

So, ‘Money Talks’ starts out quite like an early incarnation of Kyuss in fact, repetitive, but groovy, if there was more fuzz then there may be a contender for a major influence on the band who were also underappreciated at the infant stages of their career. The real curveball on this album is ‘Midnight Sun’, this is a spectacular power ballad, I kid you not. Don’t dismiss straight away though as the melody and vocal is really good, kind of mixing Kix with Ratt, much more working class than the total polished LA sound. Give it a go, it won’t hurt you!

Then there is the NWOBHM influence of ‘Wild Ride’ which has me thinking of the UK’s Elixir, especially some of the vocals (Chris Roseberry) and the galloping guitar structure. Then if you head to ‘Nations Song’ then the doom rears its head again (co-written with Wino by the way). Riffy and doomy at the same time, it’s a good hard slab of honest metal.  The doom continues with a touch of groove with ‘Firewater’ and more so with ‘World of Power’ with its NWOBHM inspired intro.

With every track there is a high level entertainment value, with each spin I can’t believe this band never got it all out there, although I am sure that line-up changes and numerous band incarnations wouldn’t have helped. That said, Lost Breed are known very much in doom circles and if you are looking for some honest ‘King of Electric’ doom and biker bar brawls, then this is the album to get a hold of first for me. This displays their earliest influences and has much more impact as it throws you sucker punches from this corner and from that corner that is merged into the Lost Breed sound and makes sense of their early years.

  1. Money Talks
  2. Desert Fox
  3. Storm Comes Down
  4. Midnight Sun
  5. Wild Ride
  6. Nations Song
  7. No Hope
  8. Firewater
  9. World Of Power
  10. King Of Electric
  11. Into The Sky
  12. Westworld