Honest

With an album title like this, it is time to come clean — no ways around it, it’s confession time. Are you sitting down? Here goes: I never liked The Lust. 

I can hear you think. “That’s impossible. You and Yan Fedyaev are known, long-time collaborators. These are great artists, these are great songs!” All true, but yeah, there you have it. With the band’s latest effort, however, my opinion needed some revision.

The Lust project is what you get if you project the musical genius that is Yan onto the female-fronted rock phenomenon. The Lust’s music itself was never an issue with me — The melodies, as always, are catchy, well balanced, and carefully constructed. As with all of Yan’s projects, these are great songs that breathe a passion many other bands can only dream to achieve. 

As always, the new cover art for this album, Honest, is amazing, maybe even more so than for past The Lust albums. It blew me away and I cannot stop looking at it. The sentence “Playing with your life” comes to mind.

The themes on this album are nice and dark, just the way I like them. That does not just go for my own two humble lyrical contributions neither — overall the feel of this album is darker and heavier than I’ve seen on any other album by the project, from composition to lyrics.

This may be the first The Lust album that I not only –like-, but I also replayed it many times over the last week, attempting to figure out what is different this time around. Same band, same singer, after all. Then it dawned on me that my issue with the band up to this point has been mostly with the female vocals.

Don’t get me wrong here, Anna Vashchilo is not a bad vocalist, but her particular brand of singing, let’s just say its never been for me. It’s not female vocals in general that I dislike either, mind you. I used to stand front row at Epica and Within Temptation concerts, loudly singing along. It’s hard to explain. It might be that I feel the sound of her voice needs Yan’s back-vocal support for power, or it may just completely be personal preference.

Then, what’s different on this album, apart from the music being a bit more on the heavy side of the spectrum, that makes me like this one, where their older work fell flat for me? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that compared to the project’s earlier work, this album is less about Anna, and more about the band as a whole. There’s a balance, a raw honesty if you will, equally exposing all the parts that make this project great. Turns out, there’s true power in that.

I give this album 8 out of 10 stars and I am sure it will make its way back onto my playlist in the near future.

Album: Honest

Band: The Lust

Release date: July 13th, 2020

Tracklist:

1. Hate At First Sight

2. Take My Life

3. Operator

4. Elaborate Disguise

5. Ain’t Sorry

6. Honest (Interlude)

7. Just One Word

8. Perfect Weapon

9. Anyway

10. Remedy

11. Light Dies

The Lust are:

Anna Vashchilo – vocals

Yan Fedyaev – guitars, bass, backing vocals

Theodor Borovski – keyboards

Lorelei Ether – keyboards

Guest musicians on Honest:

Igor Kryzhko – drums

Ilia Morozov – solo guitar on Hate At First Sight and Ain’t Sorry

Mike Yorblind – solo guitar on Elaborate Disguise and Anyway

Nikita Starovoitov – solo guitar on Light Dies

Danila Bazin – keyboards on Hate At First Sight, Operator, Ain’t Sorry and Just One Word

Max Delmar – keyboards on Take My Life

Lyrics by yours truly on tracks 9 and 11.

Randy Gerritse

July 8th, 2020