Lost City Angels 'Broken World' album

There's something very primal, immediate and innately energetic about the music of Lost City Angels.

It doesn't just speak to a certain segment of the music world, much to the dismay of industry-ites who continue to compartmentalize music into genres, demographics and neat little boxes. Instead it speaks to you… me… them.

Deeply dense yet structurally universal and melodic, LCA picked up the pieces of rock's stage-trashed guitars, punctured bass drums, splintered basses, and dented mics and duck-taped it together, cutting themselves pretty wide open. What they presented isn't pretty and shiny. Instead, it's blood-smeared and honest... rough around the edges… but in perfect working condition and sounds awesome and epic… and loud.

"Adam, Duggan and Drew were trying to start something up, so they gave me a call and then I gave Nicholas a call," reminisces Ronnie about their humble beginnings in 2000. "We started by playing in Adam's room, then graduated by putting on a show in his living room… The rest is history." For LCA, moving from room to room wasn't a spatial thing as much as a movement onward and upward. Always learning from their mistakes (like most bands, they have many), they soon played the dining room… and then the front yard.

LCA was created from the remnants of some pretty great New England bands all of different styles and genres, but when LCA got it all together and started writing songs, they combined it all to form one big epic sound. "Everyone brings their ideas to the table, not all at once, but in groups," he explains about the process. "Then the songs come to life when we all understand the song and feel it and add our own individual personality to it."

"We try to keep the doors to the songwriting way open to anyone in the band, but sometimes we all try to fit through it at once and get stuck," inputs Drew, rather philosophically. "So sometimes, someone has to let the others through first, but we eventually all make it in together. I think that's the true meaning of a band - you all have to work together. Otherwise, you're just a bunch of people playing for one person."

LCA's new album Broken World is a perfect testament of how this songwriting process of feeling things out, letting things through, and collaborating as a band has paid off. A wild and exciting tour de force through dirty clubs, power chords, and raw, unbridled emotion, Broken World pulls together some of the band's hardships and struggles - both emotionally and physically - and combines it into 13 tracks of blood, sweat, tears and bruises. From the battle cry of the opening track "Liberation", LCA unleashes its pummeling guitars, drums and basslines, while Ronnie's vocals jackhammer through your core pretty damn hard. "When we wrote that song, Ronnie came in with this riff just fucking killed, then Duggan had the idea of the chorus," explains Adam. "It's very dynamic and musical, yet with a strong meaning with balls to match," interjects Ronnie. "It's an instant LCA classic… at least to me, it is."

Other tracks like the pessimistically optimistic title track "Broken World" and the hardcore-soaked "Tonight's the Night" display the band's knack for powerful and ingeniously infectious songs that can stand on their own, yet flow together cohesively well. As proof of the band's ability to jump boundaries, the anthemic and melodically aggro "Hardly Seems" tackles the state of World Politics on a larger scale. Yet bring it down a notch and it relates to what's happening on every suburban Middle Class street in the US, as more of our troops are sent to fight someone else's war.

One track in particular, "Final Wish", holds a special reverence for the band. Dedicated to the late comedian Styles Bitchley who served as LCA's opening act in until February of 2004, the song is a fitting tribute to a man who had so many "nuances and peculiarities we remember and loved him for," remembers Nicholas. "He had this ability to always blow his stand-up routine by getting shit-faced before his set. He would get up there in his flamboyant blue tuxedo and screw up his lines and start insulting the crowd in the worst possible way." Styles, who played up the anti-comedy shtick of the likes of Andy Kaufman or Steven Wright, suffered from a massive heart attack just before LCA were to hit the stage. "I'll never forget holding him in my arms and talking to him the day he died," concurs Drew. "I don't think I'm ever gonna forget that night… ever." But in their patent never-say-die attitude, LCA played on, in fitting tribute to him. "It was the hardest show I’ve ever played," remembers Adam. "But we did it… for Styles."

Recorded in Cambridge, MA at Camp Street Studios with the massively influential team of Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade (The Pixies, Radiohead, Hole), Broken World is set to pound the rock world on its ear. "Sure, I could tell you that Broken World touches on loss, personal failures, addiction and even murder and war - or even that our testament is to rise above it. Or that it's a personal account of us as individuals trying to climb out of the filth unscathed," sums up Nicholas. "We knew from the start that our number one priority is that our music kicks ass… and I think Broken World has it in spades."

Adam Shaw: Drums
Drew Suxx: Guitar
Duggan: Bass
Nicholas Bacon: Guitar
Ron Ragona: Vocals

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Lost City Angels - Broken World