The Locust

Gold Standard Laboratories does everyone a huge favor and reissues the little EP that could (suck your brain out with a straw), the Locust's self-titled, nine-song, seven-and-a-half-minute 7" debut. The set bled through numerous printings upon its initial 1996 appearance — it reappears here on both vinyl and 3" CD, has been fully remastered, and features two extra tracks in "Ass Gravity" (:43) and "Keep Off the Tracks" (:47), which were formerly available only on wacko, hard to find compilations. As for the rest of the record (all five-plus minutes of it), it's entirely essential. "Halfway to a Worthless Ideal Arrangement (An Interlude to a Discontinued Sarcastic Harmony...Yea Whatever)" and "Prepare to Qualify" take a truncheon wrapped in coaxial to the steaming guts of hardcore, piling them steaming in a rusty cask marked "death metal/screamo." While the Locust were clearly noisy masters even then, the EP also has its moments of bizarre clarity — miniaturized and/or compressed, of course. Check the Quintron-like organ jag that slices through "Kill Roger Hedgecock"'s aural shrapnel, or "Off By a Long Shot," where the two vocalists become banshees screaming fire over seemingly unending histrionic crescendos. The minute-plus "#99" is the longest track here, offering some respite from the tension with an unsettling hall of mirrors populated by echoing electronics and a yelling head. It's genius. Pure genius.