In a modern world where metal bands are commonplace, and attempts at adding extra melody with the use of synths and an incredibly compressed tone, standing out from the crowd is one of the hardest aspects.

"Lost", the latest album from Swedish group MILE is a melodic metal album with plenty of heavy riffs and some nice moments where the usually clean vocals break into almost a raw scream, and some sections where the keyboards use a synth sound to create a mix of electronic dance music with the rock and metal that is this group's bread and butter.

While the introduction riff to "To My Grave" is pretty good, and there are some nice twin-guitar lead harmonies dotted around the album, the whole thing sounds very sanitised and a bit generic. There is nothing here that I haven't heard done a thousand times before in much more interesting ways on better albums. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with "Lost", don't get me wrong; it's a nice enough album, however there is almost no originality in the song writing, everything sounds very overproduced and sterile. (whether this means the score for Production should therefore be high, because there is evidently a lot of production here, or really low because this lead to a really watered down album with no real attack is moot).

None of the songs on "Lost" really leap out as memorable. Out of the ten tracks, the moments where the music really grabs you are few and far between. There is plenty of competent playing here, and some technically well executed passages, but these still are not in any way really fantastic.

This album is very melodic, but there are much better examples of the same thing out there. The lack of edge, energy or rawness evident, and lacklustre songs fail to set the world on fire and fade into the crowd of other groups doing pretty much the same thing.