Lost Legion “Behind the Concrete Veil” (2023), Mendeku

Over the years, there’s been so many bands that show up once on a comp or release a 7” or two and then they are gone. We never get to see who they really are or who they would have been. Thankfully, Lost Legion did not join these ranks and has released a full-length LP.

Although Lost Legion’s sound is within the traditions of hardcore or oi!, I would consider this almost ‘dissident oi!’. It resembles neither the French influenced post-punkish varieties nor the more traditional, straight up American types. With the exception of The Templars and to a lesser extent, some crust punk, the influences in the sound are not obvious to me.

Behind the Concrete Veil is the tightest Lost Legion has sounded. The production values are cleaner on here than previous releases, but a good job is done at striking a balance. Sometimes hardcore or oi! bands can go too far with the polish that it becomes almost indistinguishable from the melodic hardcore or pop-punk of the early 2000s. The production on here doesn’t hide the rawness that LL wants to exude.

The lyrics and symbology have obvious nods to Discordianism, a type of half-kidding religion or set of spiritual beliefs with origins in the 1960s counterculture. If you’re familiar with the Dada art movement of the post-World War I era, I always thought Discordianism was if Dada became less interested in making points through parody and borderline nonsensical critique and took itself serious. In any case, as far as I’m aware, this is a completely new and unique contribution to oi!, and isn’t very common in punk or hardcore.

A number of the songs are seemingly concerned with our origin as pre-human animals in ways that are hard to peg down whether they reflect beliefs in animism, ‘biological predeterminism’ or even primitivism (or a mixture of the 3). 

Pessimistic ‘biological predeterminism’ is a not uncommon theme in crust punk, a subgenre both singer Ian and myself are quite familiar with. There are all kinds of lyrics in crust whose fatalistic look at the world comes from a belief that we as humans are ‘hard-wired’ this way. Although appealing, I never quite believed in this and the points in my life where bands like Tragedy or World Burns to Death were on heavy rotation I was also running through the streets trying to disrupt the conventions of the major political parties or organizing with students, average working people and military veterans to do what we could to end the Iraq war. So I’m more optimistic about human potential and our ability to create a better world.

But regardless of what they reflect or whether I find them 100% agreeable, a band with oi! roots not assuming their audience are idiots and writing lyrics with such big picture ideas is refreshing. One of the top releases of the year so far.

Physical copies of Behind the Concrete Veil are available through Mendeku Diskak

An excellent interview with singer Ian was done by DIY Conspiracy back in February 2024.