The Locust - Plague Soundscapes

This album was The Locust's debut album working with Anti Records that was released in June 2003. Contains 24 tracks, you'll get a thrashing anxiety-attack of brutal, in-your-face grindcore, whiplash rhythms and growling, throat scratching screams propelled by reckless, furious guitars. This is a cocktail of chaos and mayhem; an infernal blast of terror and anger put into quick, barely over a minute bursts. The Locust are the band that you love to hate. They are too hardcore for the gay kids and too gay for the hardcore kids. They're not punk, punk is a dead, lifeless horse carcass that kids with tight plaid pants and mowhawks just keep beating with a baseball bat trying to get every drop of life out of it.
This album is an intelligent, cohesive, and overwhelmingly provocative album. The guys can play their instruments incredibly well, the music is wickedly tight and dynamic, it's not rare for a single 45 second song to plow through 10 time signature changes (some excellent drumming can be heard on this record). The guitar riffery is everywhere, ranging from razor sharp thrash cutups to primal sludge from outer space. The keyboards are insectoid and jerky. The tortured singing/screaming from the band members is indeed melodic (if you bother to actually listen) and contains bizarre and surprisingly nuanced rhythmic cadences that flow with the music.
Lyrically, we've got some odd, disjointed post-post-modernist ruminations on bodily fluids, political intrigue, culture, wounded animals, the environment, body parts, war, teenage moustaches, etc. The lyrics are always absurdist, fluctuating regularly between profane and profound. It's amazing how they can write such odd things, but still get the message across. It's some profound stuff.

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