There was an element of 'Right, we've got to come out fighting on this album,' " says Lostprophets vocalist Ian Watkins. "We always believed we had a big rock album in us -- we've been shouting it from the rooftops for years -- but I don't think anyone else believed it 100 percent."

For the past three years, the Welsh sextet has been touring behind a record, The Fake Sound of Progress, that had initially been recorded as a cheap demo. A retooled version of the album sold more than 100,000 copies in the U.S., but that record's new-metal leanings no longer represented the band's outlook.

More recently, the once-supportive British press turned on the group. Suddenly, the six childhood friends who were picked on in their small hometown of Pontypridd, Wales, for sporting eyeliner, toilet-brush hairdos and roomy skater pants were branded an industry-fabricated boy band.

"That's the thing, everyone was like, 'Do you have stylists?' " says Watkins. "It's like, 'Where the fuck do we have money for stylists? We're struggling to pay our rent.' "

The band channeled its ambitions and frustrations into a second record, Start Something. Produced by Eric Valentine (Good Charlotte, Queens of the Stone Age), the new songs bound from breathy Eighties pop to keyboard-laced metal to intricate post-hardcore workouts. There's also a new emphasis on songcraft, as evidenced by the rock-radio hit "Last Train Home."

"There's no set formula to a Lostprophets song," says Watkins, who nonetheless cops to the influence of Mike Patton-era Faith No More. "The only thread of uniformity is the fact that it's the same six guys playing each song. It's more of a mind-set than a musical style."

That mind-set also informs Lostprophets' image -- but now the fashion sense that once earned them abuse has pundits declaring Watkins a sex symbol. "It's flattering," says the thrift-store-obsessed singer. "And some days I wake up thinking, 'I look kinda cool.' But most days I wake up thinking, 'Ah, I look like a fucking jerk.' "

ROBERT CHERRY
(March 4, 2004)