Lost Prophets, The Enemy

This week I’ve taken a break from Lincoln’s live music scene to plough through some of the review CDs piling up here at the Echo offices, and coincidentally preview some of the city’s upcoming major performances, writes Ryan Butcher.


First off, the latest single from Lost Prophets, who are gearing up to play a series of warm-up dates, including a stop at our very own Engine Shed, in preparation for a mammoth nationwide tour early next year.

It’s Not The End of The World, But I Can See It From Here, the first taster from their fourth, up-coming album The Betrayed, sees the Welsh rock heavyweights re-invigorated, energised, and doing what they do best.

Coming in a little over three and half minutes long, It’s Not The End of The World isn’t anything new, and it certainly isn’t breaking any moulds, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s everything you might expect from a Lost Prophets come back single: distorted guitars, lyrics centred around sub-cultured unity, and a few woah-oahs thrown in for good measure. It’s sure to get legions of pierced, black-haired fans jumping around rock clubs across the country.

If the rest of the material on the Betrayed is anything like this, then Lost Prophets are sure to be a staple on the mainstream radio waves later next year.

Next up we have The Enemy, with their most recent single Be Somebody. Okay, okay, it was released last month. But they’re going to be playing the Engine Shed on 17 November, so there’s the connection there, okay?

I have a huge problem with The Enemy and their faux-working class ideals. Frontman Tom Clarke insists that he’s this authentic, down-to-earth everyman from Coventry, yet, he was born in Birmingham and attended school in Kenilworth, a nice middle-class town in Warwickshire.

In three minutes, The Enemy manage to take a swipe at the BBC – who have championed them since the off – and make reference to British steel. Interesting themes for a band barely in their twenties. The falsehoods that ring through Be Somebody are blatant and altogether manage to make me cringe more than those twins from X-Factor.

The Enemy need to accept they weren’t struggling on the breadline in the 80s, they don’t have it tough, and no matter how hard they try, they are never going to be The Jam.