Ah fuck I just absolutely love Nick Barker. I won’t say that he is hideously under-rated, because the people who like him love his work but generally, in the wider metal world, he is definitely snoozed on. This man can drum! Anyways, what do you get if you mix Nick with the string section of Napalm Death (RIP Jesse) and put Peter Tagtgren on vocals (he did some Bloodbath stuff but otherwise I am unawares of his work)? Well, you get Lock Up, of course.
I’ve seen Lock Up a few times in a few different iterations, but I have never see them with this line-up (I was a bit too young), so Pleasures Pave Sewers is an excellent document of the band’s sound from that time. It would be rude of me to say that the riffing is derivative, but it is very similar to the Napalm Death stuff of the time, which is hardly surprising as it includes two of their players, but Nick’s insanely fast and spritely drumming really gives proceedings a good kick up the arse. Tagtgren can hold his own too; bellowing out vicious explosions of bile like the icing on a very grindy cake.
Pleasures Pave Sewers doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but that’s OK.