Local Review: Lost Lotteries — Continuous Growth

Lost Lotteries
Continuous Growth
Brothers Grim
Street: 07.18.2025
Lost Lotteries = Deftones + Linkin Park + Yes

It seems like the further our democratic society slides into pseudo-meaningless territory, the more that staunch advocates for fairness and believers in the purity of revolution are seen appearing to throw their hats in the ring. The new, local prog-rock band Lost Lotteries are no exception, and they clearly honed the intensity of their craft before making themselves known to Salt Lake City and beyond in this scorching debut of an album.

The three-piece group consists of Gavan Nelson, Shawn Pierce and James Swenson, who work together to provide a powerful combination of drums, bass and guitar. Each member takes turns leading their sweeping jam sessions, which stretch a seven-song album into a hearty 42 minutes. With a poignant ferocity in both musicianship and lyrics, the band assumes what their Bandcamp self-description refers to as “the energy, defiance and purpose” of the 2000s prog-rock/post-punk era.

Lost Lotteries do more than capture the moment — they wrangle it to the ground in a dusty smattering of gravel and blood. They are the bull on the album cover, rather than the matador. The matador is the quintessential suited crony of the predominant global order who attempts to pull the red wool over the bull’s eyes for the pleasure of their jewelry-rattling crowd. Continuous Growth is meant to show it’s possible for the bull to see through this shroud of illegitimacy and fight back.

Right out of the proverbial gates, the band’s charring sound and heady lyrics communicate an understanding of the stakes as well as the breadth of the issues currently plaguing humanity. “Corporate Retreat” is a heavy burst of energy, with a prog-rock jam confidently guided by a throbbing bass line separating two lyrical halves. In a sing-talking tone, the vocalist decries “The universal construct / The seven-headed beast” and gives a not-so-subtle warning that by “supplying the demand / you will die within your means.”

“Corporate Retreat” clearly is pushing the listener to fully comprehend “the instruments at work” in our deeply and subversively controlled but still-crumbling society. This line, which is repeated in a strained yell throughout the track, must also be a somewhat meta reference to the instruments Lost Lotteries are using to drum up support for much-needed mutiny. “The realization there’s no God in this machine,” they cry, is of utmost importance.

They continue along in the same direction with “Ready State,” steered this time mostly by a pounding, entrancing drumbeat and breaking off into seemingly improvisational guitar solos that rise to the surface in between even angrier verses.

Lost Lotteries’ singer sounds best when he’s harmonizing and, well, singing, with himself. He can howl in a tone utterly reminiscent of Chino Moreno from Deftones. The third track, “Breakdown Companion,” however, contains some of the only harmonizing on the entire album. As a hypnotic lamentation, this one has a vibey, surf-psyche tone in its lo-fi, repetitive guitar riff and longing vocals.

The songs on Continuous Growth are structured by alternating between bursts of anthemic vocalizing and extended, Western-tinged jams. On “Unplanned Obsolescence” especially, the music is the vehicle, as a grinding guitar eventually breaks into a shearing, higher-pitched solo before returning to a heavy, vibrating bass line.

By communicating their extensive thoughts on the global crises at hand, Lost Lotteries ramble a bit on this first offering. Regardless, the trio’s instrumental virtuosity capitalizes with wordless syllables on the brute force of the emotion expressed in near-equal measure by their vengeful and righteous lyrical content. Throughout Continuous Growth, the band grinds away like a steampunk train traveling on an arrow-straight path through the rain, cold and scorching heat, attempting to outpace the dilapidation that pursues it, eroding the societal structures that once laid the tracks it rides on. —Kyle Forbush

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