Firstly, I can say right now that people will either love this record or totally detest it. The weird thing is that I can see both points of view as being valid simply because this ‘music’ is so violently strange that it’s hard to imagine a group of people sitting down and writing it. I had never heard of The Locust until I got this 23 track album and I thought it would be some kind of sprawling epic. I was vastly wrong, since the entire CD clocks in at a second over 21 minutes and only 7 tracks are over a minute long. As I said before, people will be polarised by this.
The best way to describe The Locust‘s music is to say that they sound like the truly incredible Dillinger Escape Plan but with less reliance on technical wizardry, incorporating strange distorted keyboard noise and time signatures that just don’t make sense. This is the noise of pure hellish evil, unholy screaming over scary walls of sound.
Because all the tracks or so short it’s very hard to comment on them – and if I’m being honest they all tend to merge together. ‘Earwax Halo Manufactured For The Champion In All Of Us’ is the sound of the world counting down to apocalypse, a pure experiment in tension and pounding drums. The electronic direction is most noticeable throughout ‘Who Wants A Dose Of The Clap?’ with synthetic, plastic tones subtitling the whole song, screeching into the foreground every so often. Superb track names, eh?
‘Teenage Mustache’ is possibly the nearest thing to melody on the entire album simply because of a momentary lull in the song which allows a simple two-note riff to break things up. This album is all about rhythm over melody as the instruments are used to create different shades of noise to compliment the juddering drums. Just try keeping up – the sheer speed and relentless nature of each and every track is mindblowing. Seriously, there is not one moment on here where you’re able to sit back and admire one instrument alone – they all work together (or against each other, depending on your viewpoint) to create the nastiest music imaginable.
I know this review has made very little sense. But if you’re willing to take a chance on something quite unlike anything you’ve heard before then go for it. Personally I really like it, but that’s because the aforementioned Dillinger Escape Plan are one of my favourite bands, but just like DEP The Locust will invoke feelings of disgust or adulation. It has groundings in the most brutal of hardcore or but there’s too many facets of noise that don’t sit flush with HC. It’s hardly metal because of the electronic aspects. It’s not prog, even though the time signatures are bloody mad, because…can you tell I’m confused? I’m interested to hear if anyone else has heard them and their opinions on them.
Ben