The Locust - On the Swarm

We got 3,000 people to absolutely hate us and all we were doing was playing music. It's something very hard for a band to accomplish and those were some of our most amazing shows ever. There was such a violent atmosphere, so much hatred…

Justin Pearson, singer with quantum mechanics-core spazz mash-up metal lunatics The Locust, is telling me how well received the band was when they toured with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the UK.

"Most bands, if they're on tour and people don't like them, they just bore people, but the entire audience wanted to kill us and we had to be escorted out of the venues by police."

Playing in skin-tight bug outfits, The Locust play a frenetic post-modern grindcore hybrid that features many songs which don't last as long as it takes to tune the instruments in-between times. It's challenging, but doubtlessly intelligent, stuff - so it's no surprise that UK audiences - without a doubt we're often among the laziest and most complacent in the world - didn't take to them immediately.

Having previously pledged to change the way people look at music, or failing that, destroy it, Justin has been flirting at the boundaries between extreme metal and almost-performance art for over ten years now. Often featuring grotesquely convoluted song titles such as One Manometer Away From Mutually Assured Relocation or Hot Tubs Full of Brand New Fuel, it would be easy to dismiss The Locust's latest LP, New Erections, as puerile extreme genre hopping for the sake of nothing other than the sake of being extreme or to shock.

"There is a message to The Locust's music," he assures us. "There are many messages in every aspect of our music, but that's just based on the fact that we're conscious human beings and we are aware of our surroundings and the world in which we live. I think all humans, or at least all artists, should be aware and affected by what's happening around them. I understand that if you're Justin Timberlake you probably have a lot less to care about and probably don't care about a lot of political and social scenarios which are being played out right now and can afford to have million dollar white trash parties. The reason artists create is because of awareness. It's not like a single musician or painter or whoever is going to set things straight, but it's hard for us to write songs about cupcakes, or to bring sexy back. We're aware of humanity destroying the planet through consumption, and the gross injustices perpetrated by the Bush administration for example, that's the stuff we're aware of so that's what comes out of the music."

Whereas previously this aesthetic came in a very much more extreme medium, New Erections features far more considered and longer songs, which allows much more in the way of development, rather than a barrage of disparate parts.

"Who wants to hear the same record they've already heard again?" Justin asks. "We wanted to challenge ourselves, not necessarily considering what critics or fans would think, we just wanted to do something different for ourselves."

Despite sometimes overly hostile reactions to their music, The Locust belong to a musical family that is beginning to see more and more over-ground daylight. Bands such as Melt-Banana, Naked City and Fantomas are all beginning to see acceptance amongst musical 'hipsters', and The Locust cannot be far off seeing their next round of UK shows swell with droves of the same kids who so recently loathed them.

"If you look at the history of music there are entire genres that are acceptable now that weren't ten years ago," Justin explains. "All these so-called extreme genres are becoming mass marketed, so maybe in five years all these bands are going to be the norm, and when that happens I guess we're going to have to try something else.

"Even when I hear something like Wolf Eyes it's not really that brutal or challenging. We have to ask: what's the next step?"