The Lost Poets do depression right

The Lost Poets are a faux-anonymous duo from Sweden consisting of David Rosengren (vocals, guitar) and Petter Ossian Strömberg (drums), and their specialty is striving to make the shriekiest, most downcast, most turgid and grinding variety of gloom rock you can pray for. Whether it’s the most depressed is questionable, but the duo happens to be great at it.

Insubordia Pt. II has been compared to a variety of blues-rock, but there's nary a blues riff or cadence here. It is, though, depression made sublime, a soundtrack for the movie where the world you loved crashes. It’s a wonderful, even beautiful collapse, crystallized with the track “Danny Electro” — persistent acoustic guitar strumming against a pounding, nearly stagnant drum beat cuts suddenly to washes of blistering electric guitar, with Rosengren’s arising from the thick murk of sound, mumbling at first and increasing in volume until he’s screaming full throttle over the raging monotony of the music. This music is the extreme grunge might have achieved, filtered through low, metallic angst of Tool. It’s not a love letter, but it is exhilarating only in the way when the bombshell of clarity goes off. This is a fine album of densely textured depression.

• Album: Insubordia Pt. II
• Artist: The Lost Poets
• Label: No label
• Songs: (1) Insubordia Pt. II (2) Danny Electro (3) Bound (4) Mouth (5) Beyond Redemption (6) In A Wasteland (7) 1000 Mph (8) In Filth (9) As Long as I Am Conscious and Clear in My Mind (10) Monomyth