Locket

Locket release their new EP this week, Never There, Never Was through Take This To Heart Records, who follow up from their last self titled EP. The band who continue to explore their sound on this new record premiered their single Everything’s Fine through New Noise here.

The band certainly bring their influences to this record, with opening track Stairdweller reminiscent of La Dispute with creative guitar work and raw vocals that really work on this track from the start. The EP really picks up the pace as it goes on, Curiousity Killed Me is certainly an example of that with a good foundation of drums and riffs that sound awesome together.

The writing has some great depth, and with the combined singing and screaming vocals, that emotion is really shown on this record throughout. Tracks such as Born To Hide really show this perfectly, where those vocals tangle together brilliantly – and combined with the good writing these songs really work for the band on this EP. This record certainly feels lighter than last record but the writing is still heavy, Dead Letters makes that abundantly clear.

Locket continue to make some great music – the melodies sound tremendous together with the two sets of vocals and it makes for some great listening from the start to the finish. Highlights for me on this EP are Dead Letters, Born To Hide and Stairdweller – The band continue to maintain their high standard on this record – if you’ve not listened to Locket yet, then I think you really should be. - thinkinglyrically.wordpress.com

“Post-hardcore” is a phrase that has become a bit taboo amongst this niche of music enthusiasts. Arguments ensue every day about which bands are or are not fit to don that subgenre, and even more arguments of what that subgenre entails in the first place. It’s like the “Emo” argument from the mid 2000s, and the eternal struggle of drawing the line at what Punk is. I’m not here to draw the line in the sand or define anything, but I can say that after listening to this EP from post-hardcore outfit, Locket, I heard solid range of everything people seem to label as such.

Locket is a five piece band based in Austin, Texas who are gearing up to release their second EP, titled Never There, Never Was.

Upon first listen to Never There, Never Was, I was immediately taken back to a simpler time in my adolescence. A time where I was waiting monthly to see what Alternative Press had to say about the new Thursday record, or if The Used were still worth listening to, and most importantly, making sure I was in all of my best friends’ top eight on MySpace. Sonically, I’m taken back to before hardcore/post-hardcore was infected with cartoon T-shirts.

Right away, I jump to comparisons to bands like Thursday and Glassjaw, but Locket doesn’t stick to that niche exclusively. Don’t worry, they don’t go to the ‘screamed verse>squeaky clean chorus>breakdown’ formula coined by bands like The Devil Wears Prada and Asking Alexandria, but the band does flirt with that with the use of dual clean and unclean vocals. The difference here is that Locket actually displays some musicianship.

The mainstream metalcore/post-hardcore scene is littered with unoriginality. There’s little musicianship, it feels at times. That’s why I found this EP to be a breath of fresh air. All the stuff fans of the bands I mentioned before love are still there, don’t get me wrong. The lyrical concepts are similar, and the sound is familiar, but it doesn’t feel like Locket were content with just putting out a run of the mill post-hardcore record. You can tell they didn’t do it all in one take or use all of their first bare-bones ideas. There are actual transitions and movements in these songs. Also, while familiar sounds, they’re not using the same recycled riffs over and over again.

Locket does not escape all the cliches, nor are they exempt from fault. Like I said, the lyrical concepts are familiar, there’s nothing really revelatory here, and some of the clean vocals feel a little inorganic, most noticeably on the first track, “Stairdweller”. That being said, the lyrics were never cringe-inducing and don’t detract too much from my overall enjoyment.

The one suggestion I would make moving forward as both a fan and a musician, is up the raw factor in the music, use a little less effects. This feels to me like a very intimate project. Similarly intimate and also incredibly hard albums like La Dispute’s Somewhere Along The Bottom of the River… or Touche Amore’s To The Beat of a Dead Horse are so hard hitting and intimate because of the stripped down factor. This is a band that I feel has similar potential. This is strictly for if the band is reading.

Revival has become a buzzword and a debatably overused suffix in recent years, whether it follows emo or easycore, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. If there’s to be a late 90s/2000s post hardcore revival, I would hope Locket is at the front of it as they sound quite promising and I find myself interested at where the band goes next. (Johnny Athey)

7.5/10

For fans of: Thursday, Glassjaw, A Lot Like Birds - ouchthathertz.com

If you were to simply listen to Locket from a distance, you would hear a post-hardcore/metalcore band that you would swear you’d heard a thousand times before – Writes Darren Hardie. However, if you started to pay attention to what you were listening to, you would realise that there is a lot more than meets the eye with this band.

Combining the sounds of early 2000’s emo bands such as early Brand New, The Used and Thursday with bands such as Glassjaw, alongside modern metalcore bands such as The Devil Wears Prada and you get an idea what you get from Locket’s new up and coming mini album. Although there are moments where you get the simple scream/sing style of post hardcore in some areas of the album such as on opener and Stairdweller and although the lyrics come across as very generic in songs such as album closer Dead Letters (‘It’s not enough, it never was’), that is not to say that Locket are just going to be another metalcore band to fade away.

First thing you will notice from listening to this EP is that there is a lot more musicianship in this band than most in the post hardcore scene where the song writing has become increasingly unoriginal and uninspiring. Locket are trying to create their own sound, with them doing this best when focusing on the emo side of the song writing. They incorporate the screaming vocals in more intelligently than most of these bands also, there’s no generic scream verse/sing chorus structures as the songs are very well thought out. This is shown mostly on album highlight Everything’s Fine, where the two vocal styles intertwine to create an exceptional chorus and a brilliantly crafted song.

Songs such as second track, Curiosity, and forth track, Born To Hide, showcase the more emo focused side of song writing with Stairdweller and closer, Dead Letters, focusing more on the post hardcore side of things with both areas showing a band who have a lot of potential and have managed to create a very unique sound that if they continue to progress with, as well as maybe toning down the production a bit to make the sound more natural, they can go a long way with. This sounds like a band trying to modernise that emo sound of the early 2000’s and if this is anything to go by, they might as well do it in the coming years. Although this record isn’t flawless, it shows a band with a lorryload of potential and if they can refine and focus their unique sound, look forward to hearing more about them very soon.

7/10 – Great Ideas and talented musicians. Nearly there, some outworn ideas. A lot of potential.

Highlight – Everything’s Fine - originalrock.net