The new album by The Locust is praised...again!
Most people have experienced waking up from a nightmare and having a few moments of sheer panic before realizing it was a dream. Of course, you immediately wonder what scared you so badly so you try to go back to sleep and return to the nightmare just so you can figure it all out. Listening to The Locust's Plague Soundscape is exactly the same. When trying to listen the album for the first time, I didn't even make it through the 41 second opening song before running for the eject button in absolute horror. From the beginning, The Locust is a complete shock - aggressive, in your face, loud, chaotic, caustic, and terrifying. But that doesn't stop you from going back to figure out what is going on.
The Locust is a four-piece band based out of San Diego that apparently play their live shows in an odd getup of tight pants and masks with mesh eye and mouth holes. While the band may get costume ideas from Devo, their music is a pure explosion of sound that definitely assaults your senses. The album contains 23 tracks that range from a mere 26 seconds to a minute and a half - any longer and your brain would probably overload. I came away from listening to the whole album (on the third or fourth attempt) in a cold sweat and feeling like a train wreck.
The vocals are a frenzied screams that leave the lyrics completely unintelligible. The song titles are inane and often funny, like "Who Wants a Dose of the Clap?," "How to Become a Virgin," and "Anything Jesus Does I Can Do Better." I can only imagine that the actual lyrics accompanying these titles are firmly ground in satire, because the music here is just too complex and turbulent to not have some sort of message. The tracks all revolve around a hybrid of noise-rock and hardcore, with plenty of sci-fi type effects, radical time changes, and all around craziness.
Clearly The Locust isn't a band that everyone is going to enjoy. Plague Soundscape definitely left me relatively dumfounded, but I can see the draw to this type of music. Unlike many albums that merely serve as background noise or a fleeting distraction, this is something that grabs your attention and won't let go. You'll be reeling long after it's over, and at the very least you've experienced something that left an extreme impression. That's already a lot more than most bands ever accomplish. If you like aggressive noise-rock, The Locust is the band to deliver.
- Jennifer, 7/14/03
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