(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by deathgrind superstars Lock Up, just released by Listenable Records.)

While everyone else was enjoying their holiday here in the States and those of us who worked retail dreaded the following day, your reviewer here was waiting patiently for that dreaded following day as well. Not because there was some innate urge to go trample someone in the charge to catch not only a potentially deadly disease but also a deal on a TV, but because that Friday also delivered to us an absolute bludgeoning of new releases to listen to. What this also provided was a fantastic case of genre-whiplash as Voices, In Mourning, and today’s subject Lock Up would also release their newest additions to their collective works.

The Dregs Of Hades is Lock Up‘s fifth full-length release in a pretty long career, but one that has seen newer releases becoming far more frequent than the gaps left between their second and third albums. It also has some new additions to the group. Notably, Nick Barker and his fantastic neverending drum fills have bowed out and Misery Index/Pig Destroyer drum-kit annihilator Adam Jarvis is in. Also, one of the changes that equally grabbed press was the return of Tomas Lindberg back into the fold on vocals – tag-teaming alongside Brutal Truth’s Kevin Sharp for an interesting hardcore punk tinge of gang shouts and dual-pronged vocal attacks to the group’s constantly hair-on-fire style of grind music. Continue reading »

(We present DGR’s review of the new album by the death-grind super-group Lock Up, which was released on March 10th by Listenable Records.)

It is rare that I find myself admiring a musician for the amount of fun he seems to be having on a disc; but I sincerely hope that one day I have half as much fun as Nick Barker seems to be having with the toms on his kit on Lock Up’s new disc Demonization.

We open with musing on that fact because if there is one dominant thing you won’t help but notice over and over during the vicious barrage of auditory violence that Lock Up wield against their listeners during Demonization, it is the constant drum fills that feature the upper part of the man’s drum kit as he just flies through the whole thing. Someone pulled him aside and told him ‘go fast’, and that is what he did for most of the album, save for three songs where the group actually slow down slightly, and he unleashes some ultra-tight blasts and rolls constantly, making sure every drum and cymbal available to him gets the everliving shit beat out of it.

But of course, that’s much like the entire listening experience; it is why we come to grind-stalwarts Lock Up in the first place, right? Continue reading »