Reverence Dies Within from Pittsburgh metal band Crown the Lost is a free flowing anthology of heavy metal styles. It contains clean vocals (power metal-ish), extreme drumming (death metal), fast tempos (thrash metal) and epic song lengths (power metal again).

Alas, the album is solid but not spectacular. It will give you a nice jolt in the car or while you play air guitar, but it doesn’t take the next step into greatness. It comes, it goes and that’s it. Still, that shouldn’t be read as too bad of a knock. There is a lot of good stuff here. The band members are excellent musicians with singer Chris Renaldi using power metal style vocals on thrash metal music. The result works well and differs from what you typically hear from this kind of music. Drummer Jon Rice actually makes the extreme drumming style work, and he keeps things pretty tight with the exception of a few flights of fancy. The dueling guitars of Joe Bonaddio and David Gehlke are also locked in, with Bonaddio lending fast yet intricate work.

I will forgive Crown the Lost for not developing an emotional connection to the listener. They are a new band and appear to become more comfortable with each other as the album goes along. By the time the closer track, “This Dead Hour,” comes, you can see Crown the Lost having found their style. Reverence Dies Within may not be perfect but Crown the Lost has potential and may make some noise down the road.