The Locust: Molecular Genetics from the Gold Standard Labs (Anti-)
“Perils of Believing in Round Squares”
The Locust: “Perils of Believing in Round Squares”
Somebody got new-wavey B-movie camp in with my grindcore. Somebody got grindcore in with my new-wavey B-movie camp!
No matter one’s perspective, The Locust is a band so unique and without peer that listeners are hard pressed to forget their first experience. Take a grindcore/power-violence base and add sci-fi synths, brilliant costumes, and humorous/asinine song titles (often in questionable taste), and boom: The Locust.
The group, though not broken up, is criminally inactive, so the best that we can get at the moment is this reissue compilation of material from its days on Gold Standard Labs (which is its own sadly departed underground institution). Collected from its earliest EPs and seven-inches as well as its self-titled “full-length,” the material here is nearly all “classic” Locust — nearly every song is grindy and less than a minute long — with basically only the two-and-a-half minute, purely electronic “Flight of the Wounded Locust” offering a glimpse of the well-rounded direction to come.
There’s also plenty of sneaky-good musicianship amid the alien sounds, blast beats, and anguished, blood-curdling screams. Whether you’re too young to know, missed the band the first time, or want to finish your Locust collection, get this now.