No Hope for the Lost
The Pilgrimage

The Pilgrimage, the second EP by duo No Hope for the Lost looked quite interesting. It has the look of a Playstation game, at least how they looked back in the day when I had the original console. I don’t really know how the boxes looks today as I play on a competing console that I like better, and I don’t really buy physical games anymore either. This is said to be a story with a Final Fantasy X theme, perhaps to use the famous game series to attract more hits on web searches, or something else. I am not so sure that you note the theme in the music, but it is hard to argue against the neat looking art.

It is metalcore, plain and simple. Not epic like it should have been with the Final Fantasy theme, unless the X that I haven’t played is the one release that actually isn’t epic but the ones I know like VII, VIII, IX, XII and the later ones I have tried on the box lately are all epic stories. The songs are fairly typical of the genre with the aggressive screamy, growly vocals, combined with clean vocals in a fairly typical way. They don’t really offer anything that we haven’t heard before, but the craftsmanship and production is good. So, from the sound perspective they are certainly on par with most of the stuff in the genre.

As an adventure this leaves much to be desired, the ideas aren’t fresh and exciting, and I find my mind wandering elsewhere to the epic adventures I have in the video game world for example. I am not pulled towards this or towards the Final Fantasy game it refers to, this EP doesn’t really offer anything exciting as it is a generic metalcore release without any particularly exciting ideas. In the end it is that cover art that is the standout point of it and the reason why I actually played it.

Mediocre is probably the best word for this one, it is like static or any kind of noise that you don’t really pay attention to. You have heard it too many times for it to interest you and leaves me wondering why. Why couldn’t they draw more on the epic side of Final Fantasy? If they want to borrow ideas there are some excellent and epic music through this game series, the music of Final Fantasy VII is magic to just name one example as it is great in all the games I have played in that series. Now I just wonder how they have imagined that they will be anything more than just another name or face in the crowd, you need much more than this to be relevant.

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