Locktender - Friedrich

By Justin C. Have you ever rediscovered one of your own purchases? I had that happen with Locktender's brilliant Rodin. I liked it when Matt Hinch first wrote about it for our site, and then I let it slip into the depths of my digital catalog.

By Justin C.


Have you ever rediscovered one of your own purchases? I had that happen with Locktender's brilliant Rodin. I liked it when Matt Hinch first wrote about it for our site, and then I let it slip into the depths of my digital catalog. Not until a couple of years later, making the start of a long drive on rural roads in Vermont, did I stumble on it again, and I was reminded how blown away I was by both the musicianship and the content: an album paired with an artist, including the sculptor Rodin and the author Kafka before that. Bombing down those roads (because I drive too damn fast, always) with Locktender’s emotional heft pushing me along, I got excited again.

Little did I know that the gap between Rodin and the band's latest, Friedrich, would be a long four years. And little did I know that I wouldn't immediately take to Friedrich.

Friedrich deals with Caspar David Friedrich, an 18th century German landscape painter. Usually I'm bored with landscapes--much like my metal, I want to get to the weird modern stuff elsewhere in the museum. But given the period he worked in, Friedrich's paintings often having a haunting, surprisingly modern feel. I urge you to take a look at the paintings (and the band’s lyrics) at Locktender's site.

With this album, Locktender decided not only to cover Friedrich, but to also tell a story over the entire course of the album. It’s a story of a man lost, shipwrecked and conscripted into a foreign army, fleeing to a monastery, and ultimately drowning himself, questioning everything about his life and faith. It's bleak stuff, but yet opener "The Monk by the Sea" serves as a grand entrance, striking an almost a triumphant tone in spite of the fact that the lyrics describe a man giving himself up to the ocean. Riffs of every variety abound, but in a cohesive way, and vocals are primarily of the hardcore-scream variety, although there's a hefty dose of clean singing, including the album's most haunting refrain: "Please let this overcome me. Tide in, tide out. Steps in a cleansing direction. Cold chills across my bones. Please let this overcome me."

What's not to like? Well, on first listens, I sometimes found the album's heart-on-sleeve emotional impact almost too much. To my ears, the band leans a bit more heavily on their screamo influence than they have on past albums, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that, either. Granted, the band has always been open about this influence, and they even list "screamo" as a tag on their Bandcamp page (along with the brilliant "philosophercore""). The epically building "Winter Landscape" features some particularly vulnerable and pained rendition of the "Please let this overcome me" vocal motif, with gang vocals on a slight delay. "The Abbey" even includes an exaggeratedly shaky vocal style that I also associate with emo/screamo, and I just wasn't sure. Could I like this and still maintain my cool, detached reserve?

But in the end, this album grew and grew on me. The band's musicianship is still brilliant. Quiet passages build into explosions and fade away, emotions stay raw, everywhere from rage to despair to quiet melancholy. Sure, a lot of us tend toward more impenetrable and cerebral metal, but I think there's still a part of us that wants memorable, anthemic choruses, even if they feel a bit over the top, and Locktender delivers. On the day I wrote this, I caught myself absentmindedly singing, "tide in...tide out...," and I knew I'd been hooked for good, and any "I'm too cool for this” pretension melted away. I urge you to give this band, and this album in particular, the same chance to work its spell on you.