ALBUM REVIEW: Last – Loma Prieta
Considering they only released music in the first half of it, LOMA PRIETA were without doubt one of the very best post-hardcore bands of the previous decade. With Life/Less, I.V. and Self Portrait – the latter two both for the revered Deathwish Inc. – the Bay Area outfit produced a run of records that could all be fairly regarded as genre essentials, particularly as they added more and more elements of melody to their sound from one album to the next. But – at least on a new music front – things have been pretty quiet since the release of the last of those albums back in 2015; January 2020 brought with it a two-track single, and there was another song released last summer that actually appears on this album, but now the band are finally and properly back with their sixth full-length Last.
Despite the eight-year gap, Last does feel like quite the natural continuation along the path LOMA PRIETA had been walking when they left off. Like Self Portrait before it, this album tips the scales further still towards more melodic and expansive territory, while crucially maintaining the core violent intensity that makes this band so compelling. It’s a fine balance struck perhaps more evenly and expertly than ever before here, particularly in a track like Dose which is grippingly raw and ferocious yet still somehow deeply joyful and exuberant. Even in the likes of Fire In Black & White, where peaking distortion threatens to overwhelm almost everything, there’s a real sense of triumph to the melodies that strain their way through, in turn resulting in one of the album’s most emotive highlights.
Nowhere is this tightrope walk between the visceral and the beautiful executed more masterfully than in the album’s two longest tracks, Symbios and Glare. Perhaps it is exactly because they have more time to play with, but it is in these two offerings that we get the fullest picture of the sheer breadth of LOMA PRIETA’s sound. The former comes in typically violent and raging, but after about a minute and a half it turns into a real tearjerker as the band build to a deeply stirring melodic crescendo full of beautiful sung vocals atop a glorious cacophony of interweaving guitars and thunderous double kicks. The latter meanwhile is already available as a single and is similarly emotive and uplifting as it journeys through passages of delicate clean guitar work, crushing riffs and finally into a wildly cathartic single chord driven climax.
If anything though, these are just microcosms of what is ultimately a remarkable whole. There is a really great ebb and flow that runs all the way through Last’s 34-minute runtime; one moment it’s overwhelmingly intense, another it is delicate and dreamy, and another still it will kick into the straightforward feel-good raucousness of punk. To hold these and many other disparate elements together in a way that leaves more of an impression than bewilderment alone is no mean feat, but LOMA PRIETA have managed it before and they do so wonderfully again here too. It can be hard to pin down even, but perhaps the main takeaway is one of intense humanity – a record that just seems to capture such a broad spectrum of emotion and experience in a way that feels true to both the beauty and the messiness that so often comes with them.
Vaguely pretentious assessments aside, Last is unsurprisingly outstanding. It is a welcome return from a truly special band and while no-one really could’ve expected them to phone it in given their previous form, it is still worth celebrating that they have continued to push themselves here. With the band having been away for quite a while, this could be an introduction to LOMA PRIETA for a fair few; it’s certainly a great place to start, but if that is you please don’t stop here as there are multiple absolute classics to go back to, each bearing their own distinct mark of quality just as this one does.
Rating: 8/10
Last is set for release on June 30th via Deathwish Inc.
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