The Locust
New Erections

"Guys, are you aware that what you're doing is killing music?"
"Yes, and if music has to die, we want to be the firing squad"

This is how Justin Pearson, frontman of the Locust, responded to a journalist's question right after finishing a live concert. It was 2003: the San Diego quartet had just wrapped up a year full of accomplishments, including the release of that masterpiece called "Plague Soundscapes", a gigantic blender of caustic noise, dissonant electronics, and blasts teetering between grindcore and hardcore, all equally distributed in twenty-three short tracks, totaling twenty-one minutes. The independent scene, so reluctant to embrace their works (from their debut in 1998, through dozens of small EPs, to the split created with Melt Banana), had suddenly changed its opinion about them, falling in love with every component that characterized their short - and intense - outbursts, from the crossover of the two voices (Justin Pearson and Bobby Bray) to the ever-moving double pedal of Gabe Serbian, to the nonconformist, antidemocratic, and anti-everything lyrics (after all, their label itself is called Anti!).

But meanwhile, time has passed. Their green locust suits may have worn out from use: certainly, nothing irreparable. What, on the other hand, has deteriorated over the years is the world, due to a shameless and senseless policy. Perhaps, that is not exactly irreparable.

And the Locust have grown. They have become more mature. For the first time, they have fully realized the reality surrounding them, which has frighteningly plummeted to a level of mediocrity that could be labeled as "concerning". They have acquired a new analytical capacity, less noisy and showy, much more ferocious and cynical, icy and detached. They sat around a table to reflect. They have touched with their own hands what "the pain of living" truly means. And they have thus accumulated, over five years of journey, an enormous amount of poisonous resentment to spit against everything and everyone, digesting with anger all the weaknesses and errors of the ruling political class.

Here we are, then, after five years of waiting, with this new "New Erections". It immediately gives us a certainty: the Locust have not lost their sarcasm. At least in assigning titles (how can we forget that magnificent "Identity Exchange Program Rectum Return Policy", contained in "Plague Soundscapes"?). As for the rest, the album is, in every way... different. The Locust have not recycled themselves, they have not rested on their laurels, content with the fame acquired. Instead, they have explored new paths, examined the space/time relationship, experimented with different solutions, achieving an instrumental mastery truly out of the ordinary. And finally, we can say it: if in "Plague Soundscapes" music was under the threat of a menacing firing squad, in "New Erections" its carcass has already been fed to those paraplegic growths winding through the artwork.

There are certainly many aspects that differentiate these Locust from the Locust five years ago. It might be spazzcore - a term much liked by purist critics - but it is certainly not the same music (or rather, the same noise) we heard on the previous album. Firstly, the number of tracks: they are no longer tragicomic samples rarely exceeding a minute in duration but rather well-composed and structured pieces, powerful, precise, and, above all, much longer. So we go from twenty-three to eleven tracks (!), and incredibly, without feeling the slightest effort or the perception of a terrible systematic void. It certainly doesn't end there: the musical aspect has also changed profoundly. The unbalanced noise of the beginnings has been accompanied - or replaced, in some cases - by an cybergrind of unheard-of malignity, which in some ways recalls bands like Cephalic Carnage, Genghis Tron, and Agoraphobic Nosebleed. But here and there also appear glimpses of genres that, until now, were completely foreign to the Californians' inclinations, such as ambient and progressive. Without forgetting electronics, much more present than before, abused to such an extent as to completely distort every possible sound.

And so we move from the magmatic counter-tempos of grindcore in "AOTKPTA", which remains lively in both the accelerations and techno incursions, to the unmistakable, corrosive, lightning-fast punk of "We Have Received An Official Verdict: Nobody Gives A Shit" (here comes the locusts' humor again!), to the bewildering, hammering back-and-forth of "One Manometer Away From Mutually Assured Relocation", a sort of daring and imprecise target practice. Certainly not forgetting the episodes more similar to what were the band's acoustic roots: the lethal and bludgeoning "Hot Tubs Full Of Brand New Fuel", or the danceable "God Wants Us All To Work In Factories" (great Locust!), supported almost entirely by the technical prowess of Gabe Serbian, ever faster and more incisive in his drumming.

But it is the less "predictable" pieces - even if predictability is hardly a term that can be associated with them - that focus more attention. And the Californians reward us with real gems, such as "The Unwilling... Led By The Unqualified... Doing The Unnecessary... For...", a sinuous piece of almost four minutes that agilely navigates between dark atmospheres and unsuspected mid-tempo progressive, or the endless hardcore of "Book Of Bot" (four minutes and thirty-one, believe it or not!), possessed by an android soul that makes the skeleton resonate with an electronic hum little or nothing terrestrial. The real masterpiece, however, is to be found in "Scavenger, Invader", a chilling and alienating whistle, incredibly annoying and itchy, alternating in a climax of invasiveness with a background of disconnected screams of rebellious timbre. Until it ends in an unnatural silence.

The courage to change direction, to strive to amaze, combined with the great rage held within for five very long years, effectively makes this "New Erections" the masterpiece, albeit controversial, of the Locust. It remains to be seen if the fans won over by "Plague Soundscapes" will react positively to this sudden change of direction from the Californians. This is certainly not an album for everyone, and if the previous one seemed absurd to you, brace yourself for a real punch in the stomach: this time, the Locust don't pass by but shoot their bullets without mercy.

Will you be able to stand up to them?