Brace Yourself, the latest release by Seized Up, is an aggressive, heart-thumping album perfect to throw on before slashing pool-coping or knifing it on a triple over-head bomb. Seized Up is composed of former B’LAST lead singer Clifford Dinsmore, drummer Andy Granelli, guitarist Danny Buzzard, with Chuck Platt on bass.
Dinsmore belts his powerfully raspy and pissed-off lyrics like the veteran he is, with a common theme throughout the album being the complete and total erasing/sterilization of local culture in Santa Cruz and other cities worldwide. Several songs on the album address this issue, but the most straight-forward one is, “Taking Back the Neighborhood”.
“It’s basically about gentrification, yuppification- whatever you want to call it”
“Pleasure Point is a great example. It went from being a great place to be to a horrible place to be. What you have are hordes of disrespectful people just converging on the place like locusts and pillaging everything in sight, without an ounce of respect for anything. The way they invent parking spots, their whole attitude, the garbage, the kooks, the Sprinter Vans camped out everywhere. It’s insane.”
“We did play three live shows which went great; we got that great feeling of a great live band and when it’s legal again to play venues we’ll be a force to reckon with on that level. In the meantime, the thing keeping us sane and productive is to keep cranking out songs and records. It’s the one thing you can do during this pandemic”
Follow Seized Up on Instagram @seizedupsc
