By Monk
The language of life is filled with little adages to which we all pay attention, sometimes unconsciously. One of the most over-used is the one that claims good things come to those who wait. Well, if such inane little sayings are to be believed, then those of us who have been waiting, holding our breaths until we almost drowned in a pool of our own piss and vomit for five long years for this, the second album from Northern Ireland industrial/tech groovers Lock Horns can finally come up for air and consume every ounce of that valuable oxygen and immediately spit it back in our faces with this declarative and emphatic return.
Lock Horns are one of those bands who defy categorization, melding so many genres and styles together, but in a way which is cogent, coherent and intelligent. Mad jazzy bass lines interject into and coagulate around the pummeling main riffs, incandescent rage simultaneously exploding and imploding via both the vocals and the instrumentation, the latter of which in turns grinds and pummels with the fury of a cornered heavyweight champion yet simultaneously seduces with light brush strokes of eloquent elegance.
As dissonant harmonics ironically combine with nu-metal melodies that infuse themselves into the deepest recesses of dark progression to create a sound that is so far off the seismic scale that it needs a whole new definition of its own, ‘Red Room’ transmogrifies the listening experience, embracing yet brutalizing, enveloping yet punishing, vibrant and at the same time dank, appealing to our darkest emotions yet extracting those all too precious moments of joy and exposing them to the valuable sunshine of realization that this is a truly immense album.