Lock Up – Necropolis Transparent (2011)

After almost 10 years since their last album, Lock Up bounces back from the death of Jesse Pintado, and delivers 16 crushing blows of Death Metal. Featuring Anton Reisenegger on guitars and Tomas Lindberg on vocals, Shane Embury and Nick Barker have managed to put together an even stronger line-up than before, and you can clearly hear this in “Necropolis Transparent”.

Since the relentless opener “Brethren of the Pentagram”, the punishing drumming is the first highlight to be noted. Then as you keep going through tracks like “Accelerated Mutation”, “Necropolis Transparent”, “Anvil of Flesh” and “Unseen Enemy”, the powerful riffing of Reisenegger creates very brutal and engaging tracks. Bordering in almost Black Metal riffing, some songs are something you don’t quite hear everyday. The brutality is there musically and they just need Linberg’s screams, and Embury’s pounding bass guitar line to push the songs into full-on headbanging anthems.

If you like your doses of Death Metal to come in compact 2-3 minute songs like in the old days, “Necropolis Transparent” will surely please you in this department. As all the ‘short-but-sweet’ tracks of this album progress, the band never slows down and songs after song they keep pushing the ante to keep a very consistent flow through this release.

Our favorite track of the album has to be “Infiltrate and Destroy” and its chugging opening riff. The drumming is also devastating (as always) and keeps up the intensity through the two minutes this track lasts. Our memories of Benediction, Morgoth, and similar bands come to mind as this album progresses (probably because of the vocal style), but Lock Up is still faster and more brutal with a modern production sound.

Closing with “Tartarus”, the band shows their ‘instrumental’ abilities and delivers a very Death Metal-like ‘relaxing’ song to end this hectic release. In this track you can notice the power of the riffing and the overall structure of the music. Summing up this release, we can say that Lock Up is here to blow you away with an excellent release. Whether this is better than their first albums is up to you and your allegiances with Jesse Pintado and Peter Tägtgren. For us, this album is excellent and delivers all that Lock Up is about with a modern sound and excellent production.

Release: July 12th, 2011

Country: UK