This is a review of "Hopelessly Lost" recorded by Royal Vendetta. The review was written by Alexander Rennie in 2008.

Without knowing precisely what he's yelping on about, this song being so frenetic in pace, it sounds as though Jonathan Banks is lyrically charting some apocalyptic scene of urban decay. Or maybe it just comes across that way because these sounds seem to have an awful lot in common with The Enemy. And once you've got that notion in your head, it's hard to escape the parallels.

What stops ‘Hopelessly Lost’ from merely coming across like some Tom Clarke album-filler, however, is the darkly retro-futuristic sheen of the sound. It's more like invading the streets of the future in the cockpit of an 80s arcade game spaceship than actually whingeing about the grim realities of the thing. The fact that we seem to hear all of the instruments all of the time, not least the sounds of a hi-hat being thrashed to the very borders of oblivion, doesn't do it any harm either.

Flip-side ‘You Answer’ is a little more two-paced, with the occasional break being taken for a blipping keyboard to soundtrack some brave new horizon or other. Between these interludes, however, it's more of the same. And that, I'd say, is no bad thing.