RR13 Locktender - Kafka Formed in Ohio, Locktender is a four-piece band from Cleveland that combines elements of hardcore, screamo, and post-rock to create an introspective blend of both chaos and melody.  Rising from the ashes of Men As Trees, the band is focused on interpreting artists and their work through a series of releases where every album is an artist and every song is a different work. On June 25, 2013, Locktender released their debut full-length album Kafka on vinyl through Replenish Records.  100% of the proceeds from the digital downloads of the album will be donated to The Samuel Mooney Fund at http://www.gofundme.com/38szzg in order to help raise the funds needed to pay for his student loans, rent, and general day-to-day life during chemotherapy treatments for non-hodgkin lymphoma. Pressing Information: Vinyl [ Test | Black | 10 ] [ 1 | Black with 18x24 Poster | 250 ] [ 1 | White with 18x24 Poster | 250 ]
"Following three splits across 2012 and early 2013, Locktender has dropped their first full-length, Kafka. The record consists of five mammoth tracks inspired by the eponymous author’s lesser-known “The Zürau Aphorisms.”  With the band’s past works inspired by writers and historical figures such as Earl Nightingale and William Blake, this comes as no surprise at all. Locktender are truly the thinking man’s punk band."  Weightless "Locktender play a thunderous, heavy, and at times glacially slow style of music that incorporates elements of post metal, screamo, and sludge within their sound.  Since their inception in 2011, Locktender have released a prolific amount of material, but Kafka is the band's debut five song LP, and let me just say that this album is stunningly crushing.  Overall, this album is a very artistic endeavor for the band, and the end result phenomenal.  Kafka makes for a dense soundscape of sheer brutality that's hauntingly beautiful as it is dark in nature at the same time.  Highly recommended!"  Elementary Revolt "An aphorism is a thought that allows and causes other thoughts, which spawns a path to new perceptions and conceptions.  Locktender, a young group that has been involved in many splits (with Cassilis, Brighter Arrows or last year the 4-way split with Coma Regalia, Oaken and Wounded Knee), decided to focus their first album on the Zürau aphorisms of Franz Kafka.  Of these 109 aphorisms, Locktender selected five and has chosen to use screamo to capture the nuances and progressions.  From Aphorism # 17 of 9 minutes and 30 seconds, it’s understood that we’re not dealing with a group of screamo like Envy and others.  Even if it is substantially in the same vein, the group from Cleveland allows bursts of savagery based around the voice of a Coalesce-era, angry passages contrasted with the more delicate rhythmic post-rock.  The philosophical screamo Locktender therefore works like Kafka's aphorisms, we let ourselves go with emotions and interpret in our own way."  Eklektik Rock