The Locust are covered out on the road!

Members of The Locust have been called many things: musical pioneers, L.A. scenesters, hucksters hyping a joke band and fashioncore victims plagued by anorexia. In a recent interview guitarist Bobby Bray systematically dismantles these rumors --- then admits they may all be true. The ambiguous foursome opens for Andrew W.K. Sunday at New Haven's Toad's Place.
The group's music is best described as different --- which is exactly the sound they want. Their new album, "Plague Soundscapes," packs 23 songs into as many minutes and sounds like the aural equivalent of the end of the world.
Songs boast titles such as "The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like To See You In His Office" and "Who Wants A Dose of The Clap?" They rely heavily on seizure-inducing time changes, warp-speed guitar riffs and opaque lyrics to achieve their brand of crazy charm.
Don't dismiss The Locust as hacks, though. Members cut their teeth in California hard-core mainstays Struggle and Swing Kids --- both respected punk bands. And members have played in a string of well-received side projects --- most recently Holy Molar and Le Shok.
Singer Justin Pearson said about The Locust, "I just want to change the way people look at music, or maybe just destroy it in general." About the state of the charts he said, "Things are so normal, safe, 4/4 timing, blah. Sometimes it makes me want to throw up." The staid state of music disappoints all the band members, Bray said, "There's so much out there that's been done before."
The Locust also stands accused of being a performance art project rather than a band. Bray owns up to the fact that they didn't "start the group just to play music" but rather to call into question what people consider music. Bray said he sees their songs as "cognoscente entities" that use the band as a mouthpiece.
The Locust always performs in hoods members call their "uniform." The yellow head covers with mesh eye and mouth cutouts resemble something from a fantastic Hollywood psycho thriller. They adopted the memorable look after being called fashionistas by the press one too many times --- Diesel jeans and "perfect" vintage T-shirts had been de riguer before the skiing beekeeper look took hold. But fashion aware they are. Even their band's merch forgoes tired T-shirts and hoodies for die-cast belt buckles and mirrored compacts --- known colloquially as "coke mirrors."
Like the Primus of the millennium, it's become a trend for showgoers to heckle The Locust. Bray said, contrary to popular belief, they don't enjoy being called "fags" and told to "play faster." The guitarist recalled a show with The Yeah Yeah Yeahs in Birmingham, UK, when his bandmates walked off stage completely defeated after 40 minutes of having overpriced beer hurled at them.
It's not easy being different.

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