As the lead singer of Jacknife, Ortiz had appeared on North Texas stages in the late ’90s and early '00s, building a presence on the local music scene. At the time, Jacknife specialized in deathcore and metalcore, or as Ortiz describes it, “all streaming and really thrash, a lot like a Lamb of God-type style,” with a dash of Slayer thrown into the mix.
The Fort Worth mainstays were a younger band, one that David Card from Poor David’s Pub called “a good metal band, put on a great hardcore show” in a June 9, 2005, Dallas Observer article.
A Dallas native who grew up in Oak Cliff, Ortiz says that music has always been his language.
“I always had kind of a rough upbringing, the same old story that a lot of people have, just trying to figure out life," he says. "Music spoke to me.”
Ortiz was 12 when he picked up a guitar, but he found it too hard to pick. So he tried the bass guitar, which was also difficult, and played it for a couple of bands before he became the frontman for Jacknife in the late ’90s and attracted interest from Paul Bassman, then the manager of Damageplan, a band that Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul Abbott had formed in 2003.
Soon Jacknife was set to tour with Damageplan, and then the implausible happened: Dimebag was shot and killed onstage along with four other people, including Jeffrey “Mayhem” Thompson, the band’s head of security. Three others were wounded in the Dec. 8, 2004, mass shooting at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio.
“It was the worst thing in the world when Dimebag got shot,” Ortiz says. “It kind of all fell apart. Paul was going through a big deal. He’d lost two people: Dave [Williams] from Drowning Pool and Dimebag. He was just kind of heartbroken. And then our van broke down.”
Ten years after Jacknife called it quits in 2010, Ortiz was attending a Machine Head show at House of Blues in Dallas when he ran into guitarist Jeff Ogle from Lockjaw, another local band trying for years to gain traction outside of the local music scene. Ogle was going through what he calls the third phase of Lockjaw and wanting to do something different from the hardcore and metalcore dominating the industry. He wanted lyrics with substance, harmonies and melody similar to what Metallica tapped into with 1991’s Black Album to elevate its music and reach a larger audience.
Ogle invited Ortiz to check out what they were doing. Ortiz saw something promising, but he had one stipulation before taking time away from his family to devote to the band.
“I already had a taste of touring and being signed and playing with big bands,” Ortiz says. “I’m not just interested in playing Dallas. I want to go all the way, be on tour again and play bigger venues. I want to play arenas, so let’s do this.”
The new Lockjaw, with Ortiz on vocals, is releasing Relentless, a 9-track album of “modern American metal fortitude,” on July 7, on all streaming platforms, followed by an album release party July 15 at Trees.
A tour will begin later this year.
“People remember Lockjaw and Jackknife,” Ortiz says. “We’re not just starting from the bottom. We just finished this [album], and we’re already thinking about the next one.”
Each new track — “Silence the Fear,” “I Can’t Escape,” “Relentless,” “Living Inside My Head,” “Sever,” “Devil in Disguise,” “Release Me,” “Breaking Point,” “No Gods Among Men” — touches on an aspect of the human condition, from mental health to human trafficking as well as the political division that's ripping the country apart.
Ogle attributes this thematic deep dive to Ortiz, whom he calls “deep” and “sensitive” and tuned into the connection between people and the planet.
Writing the music is a team effort, though Ogle says he does the bulk of the music writing. That team now includes two other founding members, bassist Gabriel Ayala and drummer Scott Letz, along with another newcomer, Justin McCurley, on lead guitar.
“All I do is pick up the guitar, and I will hum the idea on the notes in my phone,” Ogle says. “I will run out and throw on the guitar and jamming and ripping and come up with something that flows like a verse and chorus.”
He then sends the tracks to Ortiz who starts writing the lyrics.
“Whenever I write, all the lyrics are straight from my journals,” Ortiz says. “The music triggers something inside, and I remember feeling that way and write some words and expand on them. It’s a diary, and whatever I’m thinking about at the time. I’m not the only one feeling like this. … People listen and get that connectivity.”
For example, “Living Inside My Head” is a song about mental health and how people can get stuck in their heads and feel like they’re in prison, and why it’s important to quit focusing on negative thoughts and stereotyping people.
“Don’t judge,” Ortiz says. “Quit trying to make me what you want me to be. There is room for everyone.”
“Silence the Fear,” Ogle says, is about just that: silencing the voice of fear. “Breaking Point” touches upon the Trump-versus-Biden mindset and the breaking point felt among both sides. “Devil in Disguise,” on the other hand, is about the allure of cults and how people seek them out for answers only to find their minds poisoned by lies.
“People remember Lockjaw and Jackknife ... We’re not just starting from the bottom. We just finished this [album], and we’re already thinking about the next one.” –Joe Ortiz
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“Breaking Point” and “Living Inside My Head” were released as singles in 2022. Both tracks have garnered more than 330,000 plays on Spotify.
The tracks also capture the band’s new musical direction: a heavy, no-frills sound that takes all of the band’s influences from Black Sabbath to Motorhead and Deep Purple and harnesses not only the heavy sound but also the catchy hook and chorus. It’s a new sound that has been compared to one pioneered by artists such as Lamb of God, Metallica and Machine Head.
Ogle credits this new sound to producer Chris “The Wizard” Collier, who’s worked with several notable acts such as Korn, Prong and KMX. Collier helped push the music to another level by pushing the band to look beyond their expectations and make every song a banger.
Collier also acted as a tiebreaker between Ogle and Ortiz whenever they had disagreements over where to take a song musically, sending back song revisions that would exceed their expectations.
In “I Can’t Escape,” a song about addiction, the band had created a main riff and had a good vision for the arrangement. But Collier heard something different and sent a few demos back to the band.
“It was like ‘Whoa, shit, there it is!” Ogle recalls.
The song became one of Ogle’s favorites on the new album.
Though the new album is about to drop, Ogle and the band are already writing their next album. For now, he says, they have a system down and a formula that is working.
“It took us two and half years to do the first one,” Ogle says. “Now that we got that one under our belt, the next one should be out way faster.”
