The Locust, New Erections

While New Erections, the latest disc from SoCal hardcore freaksters The Locust, is not exactly tame, it doesn’t quite bear the same oppressive weight of their previous material. While certainly heavy, daunting, and at times frightening, the songs contained therein actually leave you with quite a bit of room to breathe. I’m sure this is due in no small part to the fact that all but a few of these eleven tracks clock in at well over a minute, which is much longer than The Locust generally allows for a single track, let alone an entire album’s worth.

I’ve never really thought of The Locust as writing “songs” in anything close to the traditional sense. Their pieces are more like sonic collages manufactured using live instrumentation, rather than from found sounds, like mixed-media performance artists with guitars. Since many of these songs lack any discernible melody, the focus tends to be on rhythmic overlay and textual reconstruction. Just when you think you know where the band is heading, they veer violently in a different direction or slam on the brakes, keeping the listener in a constant state of whiplash.

Like many in the new vanguard of noise, The Locust demonstrates here how noisy silence can be. Half a minute of all-out carpet-bombing noise followed by three seconds of silence can have a profound impact. The guys use that effect well here, creating a very refreshing album. The concept is not at all unlike the Russian sauna experience of jumping from a steam room into a freezing pond. After the initial shock wears off, you feel shockingly invigorated. In that way, this album becomes almost pleasant to listen to. Don’t worry, guys; I did say “almost.”