Take the more insanely violent elements of hardcore and death metal, throw in a few Moogs, put them into a blender, speed up the rmps as high as they’ll go, and out comes the Locust. Granted, that’s an oversimplification, but it works. The Atari Teenage Riot for the arty hardcore set, the Locust display all of their trademark characteristics on their first self-titled, full-length release on GSL: short, spastic blurts of overblown nervous energy held together by massive blast beats and an impeccable sense of split-second timing that never lets up, cryptic song titles (examples: “How to Build a Pessimistic Lie Detector,” “Fixed Companionship, Ghost Town Irrationality”) and equally cryptic lyrics, and a penchant for the paramilitary in terms of design. Following in the footsteps of such noisecore merchants as Angel Hair and Heroin, the Locust take Gravity-style hardcore and blow it to smithereens. In the end, though, this record is not that unique or groundbreaking in many respects, and the songs start to resemble each other more and more the more they are listened to; there is also somewhat of a shock value element to the record that diminishes with each subsequent listening. But few of their contemporaries come close to matching their incinerating intensity and sheer firepower. The manic energy and flagrant masochism of the Locust is very primal and infectious, and can keep the listener coming back again and again. – Josh Eppert