A Life Once Lost are Dunzo
A Life Once Lost have called it a day. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with frontman Bob Meadows on FigDoylestown.com [via The PRP]:
This time in your life also marks the end of your popular metal band, A Life Once Lost, fill me in on this new phase. Why leave the band after 14 years of success?/
I feel like I need to step back a little bit from that to just better myself as a person. I just felt like I wasn’t really able to handle that aspect of being in a band or that commitment. I really had to put so many things aside. I’m 33 years old now and I feel like my life has been on hold since I was 19. I’m not complaining about where it’s taken me, it’s been pretty awesome. I’ve been able to put out 6 records, film videos, see countries I would have never seen before and I’ve taken a band further than a lot of people have in their lifetime. It’s a lot of fun and it feels really rewarding.
You’ve left a solid place in music history for yourself!
Yeah, for me, but how that’s perceived by others is up to them. I feel really content with being able to leave, walk away and now re-focus. Whether it’s on a soul or music project, or whether it’s these art pieces, there’s just a lot of things that I want to do that I haven’t been able to do because of my commitment to one thing. And now, because I’m not committed to that, I can focus on making myself a stronger individual, a stronger man.
Is this the first time you’re speaking about the band break-up to the press?
This is the first time. It’s not easy to talk about because it’s still so fresh. You do something for such a long time, it ends and you’re just kinda like…shit. What now? It’s wild.
Ending it, to me, is like being released from prison. I have to step out into the world and find myself again. All I knew was getting in a van, sleeping on floors and playing shows at shitty bars for 14 years. But, at the same time, I wouldn’t have changed anything.
While I was on the road, all my friends were going to school, becoming teachers and doctors, having kids…all that. I’m really envious. But, the stories I have are pretty awesome.
It’s really hard to NOT do something that you’ve trained yourself to do, for so long. It’s hard to break habits like that.
Will there ever be a return of A Life Once Lost, or any musical project between you and those guys?
Yes, I’m sure, once things, like, pass with time. Time heals all wounds, so I’m sure that when things pass we’ll get out there again. I just need to re-energize and re-focus. It’s for the best. I can look at it like a downer, or a big fuckin’ mess, but it’s really a just a hurdle. I have to be able to jump to this ‘next level’.
We can’t say this really comes as a surprise; A Life Once Lost have been road-dogging it for a decade and a half, and for whatever reason were never really able to take it to that proverbial next level. Most recently, after the release of their new album Ecstatic Trance, they were playing the same small venues as they always had been and weren’t able to land any support roles on big tours. One could argue they had even taken a step down in that regard. Why? It’s really hard to say. The band was at the forefront of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal movement in the early and mid ’00s and then… they seemingly got left behind.
In any case, it’s too bad. I, for one, really, really liked Ecstatic Trance and it deserved way more recognition than it got. The above interviewer is correct: ALOL have absolutely left a solid legacy for themselves in the history of metal, even if they never do return (and not for nothing, Meadows leaves open the possibility of a reunion).
R.I.P. ALOL.
