Don't Slash The Locust's Tires
Please, if you must slash the tires of The Locust's van while they're on the road --- touring the U.S. throughout the month of March --- COME ON, slash at least two. Or at least that's what singer/bassist Justin Pearson suggests, tongue very much in cheek.
"Oh, well. They're fucking chickenshit," Pearson said, recalling an incident in which one tire on the group's van was deflated. "They only slashed one tire. We have a spare, you know? If you want to be tough about it, if you want to have it create problems for us, slash all our tires."
No one knows for sure why The Locust draw such hatred from a small but pissed-off few in audiences across the nation. Maybe the sexually repressed, testosterone-overdosing tough guys don't appreciate the hardcore San Diego foursome's wild, skin-tight uniforms, crazed stage antics or use of the keyboard.
Or maybe they're just dumbfounded by the social consciousness and grave politics within Pearson's disturbing and indecipherable shrieks, which front the band's dark and frighteningly fast instrumentation. But seeing how this is noisy hardcore at its scariest, strangest and maybe even artiest, in all likelihood they just don't get it.
"It's really a trip to deal with this kind of shit," Pearson said during a recent phone interview. "First they'll start with heckling --- we're all pretty witty and we all have good comebacks, so we'll take on people verbally. But then it'll escalate to like --- they'll throw bottles at us, then they'll throw a barstool at us, and then next they'll steal our equipment and slash our tires.
"We had problems with straight-edge gangs, and we had problems with drunken assholes and big tough-guy hardcore thugs," he continued. "I don't know what the deal is, but it gets violent. It's like, 'What the fuck?' We've made it through some crazy shit so it's like, 'Oh well, we're alive.'"
Still, for the frontman, being onstage isn't all that bad. "It's this weird state of mind --- you become irrational and you have adrenaline, all these endorphins and really high energy," explained Pearson, who also runs the hardcore/post-punk label Three One G Records. "It's like a dream state. I know that sounds cheesy, but it happens and you go, 'Oh, that was it?'
"And then occasionally, I get hit with a bottle or someone keeps yelling 'fag' at me over and over --- it's not my name --- and I'm like, 'Oh, OK, assholes.'"
Music For The Apocalypse
Jacked up on a heightened political consciousness and social sensitivity, the members of The Locust --- Pearson, drummer Gabe Serbian, keyboard player Joseph Karam and guitarist Robert Bray --- are so alive, it's scary. Mirroring day-to-day existence, the furious sounds of The Locust --- who will release their second album, Plague Soundscape (Anti/Epitaph Records), June 24 --- permeate like smoke off the remains of a post-apocalyptic world.
"The music we create is a product or our society," Pearson explained. "If we all lived in a rainforest somewhere, there'd be a lot more peaceful music. We're on edge and fed up and angry, dealing with all these issues that come into our lives. It's not like we're consciously going, 'Let's write fast, mean music.' It just comes out.
"It comes from our mindsets," he added. "Look at where we live. Look at this world we live in --- it's so fast-paced. The media, computers, having a job and all this traffic and all this shit that goes on in day-to-day life --- it carries over."
With a sort of hyper consciousness of the high-speed world they live in --- more specifically, of its downfalls --- members of The Locust can't help but invent dark and chaotic noise. "Even if we write a song and a part is more mid-tempo rock or pop, it still will come off with this creepy feel," Pearson said. "That's just how we are as people. If we weren't socially conscious and we were just living life for ourselves, then we would probably have different aspects to what we're doing."
High School As The Apocalypse
Such dissatisfaction with one's environment is nothing new for the singer. Pearson, a definite outcast, endured much adversity at Mission Bay High School in San Diego, a school he says was attended mostly by kids with parents in the military. "It was pretty rough," he said. "I was surrounded by people with this very different mindset. It was hard for the weirder punk and skater kids at our school. It was hard 'cause I'm pretty outspoken about things, and when I was in class and we were debating politics, I would end up getting my ass kicked in the hallway outside of the classroom. I even got punched in class."
There were other problems at school. "There was a school newspaper, and this guy wrote this bizarre article about gay bashing. It was fucked-up," Pearson said. "Not only was I offended by the article but [also] that the school even printed it. So, I wrote something back to everyone. I took as many cheap shots as I could, telling all these people to fuck off and I signed it 'Jesus Christ.'
"It escalated into this really big deal," he continued. "People were breaking into my locker and stealing my books and [they'd] key my car. My band [Struggle] played there at my school, and I got beat up afterward."
Pointing out the resulting character-shaping affects, he added, "I'm glad I had these experiences --- it made me a better person, it made me a stronger person. I'm glad I was there to combat these things and shed some light to people that wouldn't necessarily think this is wrong."
Still, after three years of conflict at Mission Bay (and after getting kicked out of his home for reasons he didn't get into), Pearson transferred to an alternative high school. "I got a lot better of an education there," he said. "It was good for me, 'cause I got to work at my own pace. I ended up actually getting into college a half a year earlier. Out of both of the schools I went to, I got good perspective on a lot of different things."
But such beneficial experience doesn't come without hardship. "Having to pay rent somewhere and stay on my own and still stay in high school and graduate was hard. I grew up fast," he said.
Enduring the loss of his father at the age of 12 and living in a family torn apart by it, Pearson turned to punk rock. "My dad died and it made a lot of my family life messed up, so I got more into punk --- that's what helped raise me," he explained. "I got a guitar around the same time from my mom's cousin, and started playing. I was really into the Sex Pistols; that's what influenced me. There was this appeal to how they were, not necessarily musically, but their aesthetics."
How We Got To The Apocalypse
The Locust, who released their self-titled debut album in 1999 on GSL Records, formed in 1996 with a lot of hardcore influence and without a lot of rules or strict formulas. "We didn't set out to sound like we do," Pearson said. "Over time, things just happened. We introduced a lot of electronics and effects, and we all got a little better musically, and we started writing from a more creative perspective --- not typical 4/4 timing stuff. But it was never sought out. It's weird. People are like, 'How did you come up with it?' And we're like, 'It just kind of happened.' When you mix the chemistry of people, crazy shit happens."
And while recording the upcoming album, the band continued to attempt new experiments in sound. "With this new record, we all started introducing different vocal techniques," Pearson said. "Not those scream-y [vocal styles], especially now with mainstream picking up on crazier music, and they're starting to use that lame term, 'screamo.' So, I think it's good that we're shying away from what all these other bands are into doing."
With an ample amount of studio time for recording Plague Soundscape, The Locust were further enabled to experiment while at Grandmaster Studios in Hollywood. "I thought it was awesome," Pearson said of the recording experience. "The fact that we recorded in a really nice studio and had a pretty big budget to record our new album with helped us learn about different stuff like tones and different ways of structuring songs."
Pearson is thrilled with the result. "I hear the recording and I'm amazed," he said. "It was funny, 'cause when we first did the basic scratch tracks, I was like, 'That sounds better than our other record [completed]. It sounds fine right now like that.'"
Reflecting on where he's been and where he's headed, Pearson said, "For the earlier part of my life, I never thought it [music] could be something that I could dedicate my time and most of my life to.
"I thought it would be like I was never good enough, I'd have to do it as a hobby and I would suck forever," he continued, laughing. "But eventually it started getting better and better, and now running a record label as my source of income and playing music as a source of income is great. I've worked really hard to get to where I am. Someday it'll pay off even more, I'm hoping."
For a listing of tour dates, please check The Locust's site.
-Jenny Tatone
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