It is rare to find a musician having the amount of fun that Nick Barker seems to be having on this disc and also with the toms on his drum kit on LOCK UPâs new disc âDemonization.â
If there is one dominant thing you wonât help but notice over and over during the vicious barrage of auditory violence that LOCK UP wield against their listeners during âDemonization,â it is the constant drum fills that feature the upper part of the manâs drum kit as he just flies through the whole thing. Someone pulled him aside and told him âgo fastâ, and that is what he did for most of the album.
âDemonizationâ arrives almost six years after the groupâs last album, âNecropolis Transparent,â which keeps with the groupâs pattern of infrequent releases, as âNecropolisâ had come out close to a decade after the album prior to that one.
LOCK UPâs lineup has maintained both grind legend Shane Embury and long-time death metal journeyman drummer Nick Barker. Guitarist Anton Reisenegger joined them a few years prior to the release of âNecropolis Transparentâ and former BRUTAL TRUTH/long-running VENOMOUS CONCEPT vocalist Kevin Sharp picked up the vocal reigns in 2014.
LOCK UPâs approach to writing music and the speed at which they play it is almost purpose-built to bring out the rawest screams of their vocalists, and Kevin Sharp is perfect in his new role, sounding harsher than hell throughout âDemonization.â Much of his delivery is extremely hoarse and delivered at an extremely fast pace.
The thing about LOCK UP, their chosen genre fare, and the âDemonizationâ album as a whole, is that there is a severe lack of subtlety. You can almost guess by the title of âDemons Ragingâ what the song is going to sound like. It is noisy, turbulent, and destructive.
Itâs an exhausting experience, but itâs that burnt-to-a-crisp extremity youâre after in the first place, so if you want to feel like a scorched skeleton by the time an album wraps up, âDemonizationâ is the wall of fire meant to do that for you.
@Regranned from @thisdayinmetal - Nov 27th 1967 #ShaneEmbury bassist with #NapalmDeath was born!! #HappyBirthday #DeathMetal Did you know.... Before joining Napalm Death, Embury played drums in a death metal band called âWarhammerâ. - #regrann (en ChiriquĂ, Chiriqui, Panama)
Shane after his set with Brujeria rocking the new bandana! #untilweburn #brujeria #napalmdeath #shaneembury #reggies #reggiesrockclub #reggieschicago #blackandwhite #blackclothes #bandana #extrememetal #mexicanamerican #hangman #noose #skulls #paisley #greenroom #chicago #bass #bassguitar #metal (at Reggies Rock Club)