Man, I’ve listened to this thing so many times, trying to pin down exactly what it is that Locked In reminds me of and I finally came up with it. It was like a goddamn light bulb appeared above my head: Twin City Faction sounds like a less dissonant version of This Machine Kills or a slightly more spastic replica of the Torches To Rome 12”, just with a little less oomph and a few more hardcore breakdowns. It’s not quite as dense as TTR—Twin City Faction bobs and weaves their instrumental interplay too much to get the “wall of sound” thing going, but they’ve got the same sense of impending doom, the same frantic quality that those bands really nailed down in their heyday. Crazy stops and starts, a brutal rhythm section, a vocalist who belts it out so hard it sounds like he’s trying to turn his innards into outards, and backing vocals that screech, cement and accentuate it all. Throw that all together with some pretty decent social/political lyrics that aren’t dumb and a nice layout and that’s what you’re looking at. It’s by no means a monumental album but it’s also not an album that should be glossed over or shitcanned as inconsequential. Nice work.
–keith (Deathshead)