Lostprophets members: Watkins said he was innocent

MOST musicians who’ve been in big bands, launching a new project, will only talk about how excited they are to be moving forward, how their new music has put them back in touch with what first excited them about music.

That’s not an option for No Devotion, no matter how much they might wish it were, because of the identity of the band five-sixths of them used to be in. Or, more specifically, because of the identity of the singer of that band.

The last time Lee Gaze saw Ian Watkins was in December 2012, when the pair met in London to film the video for a single from Lostprophets’ fifth album, Weapons. Though the rest of the band were in America, leaving the guitarist and singer to shoot the clip on their own, Watkins was upbeat. When he arrived (“Four hours late,” Gaze recalls), he avidly discussed the future of the group, who were still one of Britain’s bigger rock outfits despite a drop-off in sales.