The Betrayed (Lostprophets album)

Writing and recording

Having started writing new tracks between tour dates in 2006 and 2007, Lostprophets debuted several new songs live in 2007, including "Next Stop Atro City", "The Dead", "Weapon" and "For He's a Jolly Good Felon". The band recorded demo tracks in then-drummer Ilan Rubin's garage in San Diego, and album sessions with producer John Feldmann in Foxy Studios, Bel Air in July. A demo of "Weapon" was played on BBC Radio 1's Rock Show in August 2007, and subsequently revealed by the band to have been rejected from the album. However, a different version of this track was later released as a hidden track on the band's fifth studio album, Weapons. In January 2008, Kerrang! magazine revealed six new song titles, including one ("Save Yourself"), which later appeared as a bonus track on Weapons, and four ("Credible vs Incredible", "The Mourning Reign", "What Seems to Be the Problem Officer?" and "She's with the Banned") that have not been mentioned since.

Although the band had recorded a full album's worth of material in LA, reportedly spending around $500,000, they felt that the resultant recordings were too "slick and shiny", featuring layers of Pro Tools and even trumpets. Dissatisfied with this, the recordings were scrapped and the band approached Bob Rock (producer of Liberation Transmission) to produce the album in March 2008. However, Rock's hectic and unpredictable schedule, coupled with his scepticism that the songs were good enough to work on full-time, meant that they were not able to record with him until April or June 2009. The band also left their US record label, Columbia, also unconvinced of the quality of the new material, around this time, with Sony Music Entertainment taking over their actions in the American market. Faced with such adversity, Lostprophets decided to take control of the record back, with bassist Stuart Richardson (who had produced the band's demo EPs in the late 90s and the self-titled debut album for Attack! Attack! earlier in 2008) leading the production alongside Justin Hopfer for the album. They continued writing in 2008, debuting eventual first single "It's Not the End of the World, But I Can See It from Here" (a title that had been mentioned since August 2007, having been one of the first songs written for the new album in 2006) and "Streets of Nowhere" live, as well as a new version of "Next Stop Atro City".

In November 2008, Lostprophets finally began the sessions for what would become The Betrayed. Following pre-production in Alabama the band moved on to Sunset Sound, Kingsize Soundlabs and Richardson's home, all in Los Angeles. The band enjoyed the freedom self-production gave them, feeling that the album is "totally representative" of them rather than being "diluted with someone else's vision". Rubin was invited by Trent Reznor to join the touring band for Nine Inch Nails in November 2008, and so left Lostprophets but not before tracking all of the drums and helping pen some of the music for the album. Former Beat Union drummer Luke Johnson joined Lostprophets around June 2009, has filmed the videos for the album's first two singles and has played live with the band since late August. The album recordings were announced to be completed via a MySpace blog on 31 March 2009, with interludes recorded around May. In August 2009, "If It Wasn't for Hate We'd Be Dead by Now" followed by "Dstryr/Dstryr" and "Where We Belong" were played live for the first time.

Release history

Due to the issues the band faced whilst making the album, its release was delayed many times. Initially the band wished for a quick-follow up to Liberation Transmission, hoping to release the album before the end of 2007. The band soon revised this timeframe, hoping to release a single in Autumn 2007 and the album as soon as possible afterwards. Before the Feldmann sessions were scrapped, the release was set for mid-2008. With the second attempt at recording underway in late 2008, the band planned to release a single in April and the album in June 2009. In May 2009 a YouTube blog reported the release to be August or September of that year.

Stuart Richardson announced via Twitter that the album was totally finished on 26 July 2009. The website for the magazine Rock Sound subsequently revealed that the album had been delayed once more to early 2010, and that the first single is "It's Not the End of the World, But I Can See It from Here", due for release in October 2009. The title and several tracks were revealed in the 5 August issue of Kerrang! magazine. "It's Not the End of the World" was played for the first time on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show on 19 August, where the release date was mentioned on 12 October. This was later confirmed on the band's website. On 7 October 2009, an email from the band's mailing list stated the album is to be released on 18 January 2010, and on 9 November XFM and BBC Radio 1 confirmed the second single as "Where We Belong", to be released a fortnight prior to the album. The third single from the album was "For He's a Jolly Good Felon", which was released on 12 April 2010.

Reception

The album received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 67, based on 10 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".

Influences and themes

Since the album was first talked about in November 2006, Lostprophets have stated numerous times that the album would be "darker", "more apocalyptic", "grittier" and lyrically less optimistic and more cynical than their previous efforts. In August 2009, Stuart Richardson stated that this thematic change had been nurtured by the subsequent difficulties with "behind the scenes bullshit". Both Richardson and fellow band members Jamie Oliver and Mike Lewis stated that the new album would draw upon elements from across the band's three previous albums. Oliver considers the lyrical content of the album the main source of the "dark element", with vocalist and lyricist Ian Watkins having previously called the lyrics "nasty" and "horrible", displaying a "more honest" representation of his own character. Despite this, the album has still been described as "poppy" and "catchy", with the "massive hooks" the band are known for remaining. Like The Fake Sound of Progress and Start Something before it, The Betrayed features interludes between tracks. Several of the new songs performed live incorporated group singalong elements, with the audience encouraged to join in at live shows. "For He's a Jolly Good Felon" and "Streets of Nowhere" are "Motown-y, mod type songs", a style the band previously explored in "Can't Catch Tomorrow (Good Shoes Won't Save You This Time)". Inspiration for the new record has also been drawn from Faith No More and Refused, bands that inspired Lostprophets in the early days of their career. Similar to previous Lostprophets albums, the closing track uses instrumentation "a little different" to the band's usual style.

Track listing

All lyrics written by Ian Watkins; all music composed by Lostprophets except "It's Not the End of the World, But I Can See It from Here", by Lostprophets and Ilan Rubin.

Personnel