E-Mail This Article to a Friend Starting something England’s Lostprophets find a home in the US BY SEAN RICHARDSON

One of the biggest alt-rock breakthroughs of the year belongs to Lostprophets, whose current Start Something (Columbia) has been certified gold on the strength of the chart-storming "Last Train Home." With that achievement, the English natives have become one of the few contemporary European acts to make a significant commercial impact on the US rock scene. How have they succeeded where so many others have failed? Just listen to them talk about the music they grew up on.

"A lot of the bands in our area were Anglophiles," Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins says. "Oasis, Blur, Stereophonics, Manic Street Preachers — we didn’t come from that scene, aside from when we were really young and used to listen to the Police. In our teenage years, it was New York hardcore, DC hardcore, Bay Area thrash. We were the black sheep for a long time. It’s ironic that an American major label signed us. Because until then, we were just on a UK indie, and nobody gave a shit."

In their homeland, Lostprophets remain signed to Visible Noise, the London label that gave them their first break. The band now have two English gold albums under their belt, and they just made their fourth appearance of the year on the BBC television institution Top of the Pops. Their summer schedule has included everything from opening a month of European stadium shows for Metallica to playing Japan’s enormous Summer Sonic 2004 festival. Right now, they’re on a US headlining tour that hits Providence on August 12 and Boston on August 13.

Like Good Charlotte, with whom they share producer Eric Valentine, Lostprophets play mass-market rock that gets its edge from their underground influences. The call-and-response chorus on "Last Train Home" is a trick borrowed from hardcore, and the song’s seething mosh breakdown is one of the heaviest things on the radio this year. Reeling from a relationship gone sour, Watkins looks on the bright side: "But there’s still tomorrow/Forget the sorrow/And I can be on the last train home." "It comes from that old adage," he explains, " ‘To have loved and then lost is better than to have never loved at all.’ If you’ve been in love and had your heart broken, just be happy that you’re feeling something. It’s a song about not wasting energy on negative feelings. You can always make something good out of a bad situation. "

On the follow-up single, "Make a Move," Watkins harps on the album’s primary theme: motivation. "Wake up, wake up, wake up/Yeah, I’m so sick of waiting/For us to make a move," he sings over a brooding electro-rock groove. "A lot of people of our generation have dreams, but they never fulfill them," he points out. "They’re just treading water. The song was born out of that frustration. I hadn’t heard many albums recently that had that theme. It’s either ‘Look how bad my life is’ or ‘Look how much I love this cute girl.’ I wanted to write an album about getting people off their asses."

Start Something has spawned two additional hits in England: the raucous "Burn, Burn" and the pogo-friendly "Last Summer." Clocking in at just under 60 minutes, the disc proves the band are as ambitious as they are versatile. Keyboardist and programmer Jamie Oliver is the wild card, making liberal use of samples and Linkin Park–style electronic interludes. "To Hell We Ride" recalls the lurching aggression of "Shinobi Vs. the Dragon Ninja," the minor hit from the band’s 2001 debut, The Fake Sound of Progress. And the soaring, harmony-laden "Goodbye Tonight" is commercial rock at its most poignant.

Full of screaming and taking its lyrical cues from the Gorilla Biscuits classic "Start Today," "Start Something" is the disc’s most explicit nod to Lostprophets’ hardcore roots. Still, this is a band so unapologetic about their pop side that they named themselves after the title of a Duran Duran bootleg. "We came from the hardcore scene — Agnostic Front, Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits," Watkins acknowledges. "It gets to the point where you think, ‘There must be something more than this.’ People are so judgmental if you try to do anything outside the box. Before we got into hardcore, we grew up loving 1980s new wave. In latter years, pop has become a bad word because of all the manufactured crap around, but pop used to be a good thing. We just wanted to get away from any scene and do our own thing."

Lostprophets perform on August 12 at Station Park in Providence; call (401) 272-9550. They play the following night, August 13, at Axis, 13 Lansdowne Street in Boston; call (617) 262-2437.