Metal Hammer LOVES the new Locust album!

Formed in '95 from the remnants of San Diego stalwarts Swing Kids and Struggle, The Locust have been making unconventional teeth-on-edge no 4/4 shit rock 'n' roll for nearly a decade while the blood brothers were getting dressed by their mommas. Many hardcore boneheads hate them, which is important: truly great bands must be despised and derided as well as loved
obsessively.

They sound like somebody singing along to a factory drill shop, or a car accident set to music: that good. The band's eponymous debut was 13 minutes long and sold out within a nano-seconds of release: that same year they further pissed off the hardcore "fat kids" by releasing an EP of collaborations with Djs like Kid 606 and I am Spoonbender.
'Plague Soundscapes' sounds like nothing you've ever heard before. Reaching for comparisons is pretty useless -Refused for sure, John Zorn's naked city, Atari Teenage Riot certainly, Japanese indie bizarros Melt Banana maybe- because as soon as you think you have them pegged, they shift the goalposts on you.

At just over 23 minutes, this would qualify as an epic: most songs clock in at just under a minute, as though every idea they have gets lit up like a cigarette and discarded as fast as possible so that they can light up the next one. They have great titles like 'Earwax Halo Manufactured For The Champion In All Of Us', 'Anything Jesus Can Do I Can Do Better' and 'The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like To See You In His Office' that may or may not have some relevance to the actual music.

It's liberating and shocking, just when you thought that the possibilities of guitar/bass/drums/vocals had been wrung dry, that the future was nothing but retro. This album is as beautiful as mangled ugliness can get!

Tommy Udo
(9/10)