The hour had grown late, and it was now time for the famed super-grind group Lock Up to prove that they could deliver where local support act What Worms Inherit had failed...

...they had to deliver a show which could wake up the Danish audience on a cold January Sunday night, a feat not easily executed!
Ok, I won’t lie and say I was not impressed by the number of people who had shown up all of a sudden; Beta certainly isn’t the largest place around, but when What Worms Inherit played the place had been close to empty, and now we were practically shoving each other for space!
Considering the slow, monotonous riffing the band used as n intro though, they weren’t exactly off to a good start to achieve the aforementioned goal but rather quite the opposite; the crowd was still standing still, clutching their beers and not really making a sound...
What to do?
Well, the band did the only thing they could do; they changed tactics. As soon as the intro was over they dived headlong into the first face-melter which happened to be none less than the title track of their first album, Pleasures Pave Sewers! The crowd wasn’t going to be won over that easily though, and even though the band kept right on delivering one high-speed killer after the other, without leaving much time to take a breath in between, they would still not garner much more than some appreciative applause and ”Hey!” shouts when the music was low enough to make them heard...

This wasn’t going to discourage the band though, and to lighten the mood vocalist Tomas ’Tompa’ Lindberg tried out a bit of Gothenburg humour, which sadly hit the ground harder than Lucifer did when he fell to Earth...
A b it more sympathy was garnered when he asked that everyone would think of him in the morning as he had to be up for work at eight the following day; as this was a situation many of us could give a recognising nod to, this was exactly what happened.
Lindberg also got some well-deserved credit for remembering to bring the show to Copenhagen, which incidentally was the last date on their Scandinavian tour. Or as he himself put it; ”Now we’ve visited four capitols on this tour. Oslo which is the capitol of Norway, Stockholm which believes it is the capitol of Sweden, Gothenburg which is the capitol of fucking everything and now finally Copenhagen!”
Yes, little by little the audience was lured in by his charm. And of course the blinding fury of the music.

By now, the heat was rising as the band, which had worked their asses off from the get go, was finally getting some response in the form of wild headbanging at least from the foremost lines of the crowd, and it was becoming for the show. The only one who seemed to have a hard time with it was drummer Nick Barker, who seemed quite out of breath where he was sitting, well pressed up against the wall because the stage was so small. Of course it didn’t affect his playing, but I don’t think the man would have had anything against a fan, or at least a cold drink once in a while.
As mentioned, the rest of the band was rocking out as best they could, with Lindberg being the liveliest and Shane Embury and Anton Reisenegger laying down some serious headbanging of their own. One thing that took me a bit by surprise about the latter was that he was still being introduced as the ”new guitarist”; after all, Jesse Pintado passed on over five years ago, and it’s what, three or four years ago that he, Reisenegger, took over the guitar position in the band... Well, anyway, Pintado got his classic salute in the form of the two Terrorizer covers Storm Of Stress and Fear Of Napalm, and that was the end of that story.

There were other stories though, but they weren’t always so easily understood; whether it be of road weariness or something more liquid perhaps, Lindberg tended to slur a bit when he spoke. Like the time he was dedicating a song (Feeding On The Opiate) to his closest friends right now, which after a look was corrected to ...of all time, or when he called out ”Ladies and girls” instead of ladies and gentlemen, or when he... Well, you get the picture I’m sure.
The most positive response he got was for comment which came through clear enough though, and that was when he towards the end said that he hoped we didn’t mind if they came back to play for us again at a later point; likewise, the biggest smiles on the bands faces came about when someone in the crowd quite suddenly and very loudly called out ”We love you!”.
My personal favourite on the other hand was when Lindberg called The Jesus Virus a Christmas song...

Twenty songs the band managed to squeeze out of the evening, and although it was pressing my upper tolerance-limit for this type of music, I can’t deny that out photographer Lunah Lauridsen seemed to have the time of her life.
What I found to be a nice touch though was that the band, Embury especially, took the time afterwards to go down into the crowd and hang out for a chat and a few beers before they had to leave; fan-friendly interaction indeed.
In the end, Lock Up certainly did manage to deliver. The crowd may have been so and so, but they eventually warmed up, and I think people on both sides of the stage had a good time in the end...

Setlist:

Pleasures Pave Sewers
Brethren Of The Pentagram
Accelerated Mutation
Slaughterous Ways
Triple Six Suck Angels
Violent Reprisal
Detestation
Feeding On The Opiate
Rage Incarnate Reborn
Submission
The Embodiment Of Paradox And Chaos
Castrate The Wreckage
High Tide In A Sea Of Blood
Necropolis Transparent
The Jesus Virus
Storm Of Stress (Terrorizer cover)
Fear Of Napalm (Terrorizer cover)
Vomiting Evil
After Life In Purgatory
Cascade Leviathan