Plague Soundscapes

by The Locust

Overview

Plague Soundscapes is the Locust's first release for Anti, the Epitaph offshoot that includes among its intellectually superior ranks Tom Waits, Eddie Izzard, and Buju Banton. Have these respected dinner guests encouraged the Locust to serve up something less severe for dinner? Of course not. Plague Soundscapes is a churning miasma of sonic goo, a grindcore steam shovel with an insatiable appetite for shock and awe. Twenty-six-second bursts of tinfoil-biting noise molt into cohesive songs. Cheeky titles like "The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like to See You in His Office" and "Priest With the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Get Out of My Bed" disguise tightly wound arrangements that include insanely intricate drumming, assaulting keyboard squiggles, fantastic tag-team screams, and reams of razor-wire guitar. It only takes 21 minutes for this noise blanket to fully cocoon the listener, but a few more to really figure out what's going on inside. Plague Soundscapes never takes its knee off your chest, which will deter many a potential fan. There are no ballads here, no forays into proto-disco or industrial beatmaking. The closest it comes to a smoke break is the random electro noise loop ending "Anything Jesus Does I Can Do Better." Instead of sussing out the road to accessibility -- and maligning its artfully crafted weird science project along the way -- the Locust dredges the sluiceway between grind and noise, bringing brutal social comment to the surface and putting a big bitch slap on tradition-minded metal. It's definitely not for everyone; in fact, it's for very few. Nevertheless, it's important for bands like the Locust to exist. Brain-twisting records like Plague Soundscapes keep all those bands making an easy buck playing pap up at night, shaking in their nightshirts because they hear a sick buzz in the nighttime. Out there in the darkness, the Locust are doing it for the love. They have to be. Why else would a band name its pointed political protest rant "Psst! Is That a Halfie In Your Pants?"? ~ Johnny Loftus

Product Details

Release Date:	06/24/2003
Label:	ANTI
UPC:	0045778666713

Tracks

1. Recyclable Body Fluids in Human Form
2. Identity Exchange Program Rectum Return Policy
3. Solar Panel Asses
4. Live From the Russian Compound
5. Earwax Halo Manufactured For the Champion in All of Us
6. Wet Dream War Machine
7. Listen, The Mighty Ear Is Here
8. Who Wants a Dose of the Clap?
9. Teenage Mustache
10. How to Become a Virgin
11. Anything Jesus Does I Can Do Better
12. Late For a Double Date With a Pile of Atoms in the Water Closet
13. File Under Soft Core Seizures
14. Practiced Hatred
15. Psst! Is That a Halfie in Your Pants?
16. The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like to See You in His Office
17. Pulling the Christmas Pig by the Wrong Pair of Ears
18. Can We Please Get Another Nail in the Coffin of Culture Theft?
19. Your Mantel Disguised as a Psychic Sasquatch
20. Twenty-Three Lubed up Schizophrenics With Delusions of Grandeur
21. Captain Gaydar It's Time to Wind Your Clock Again
22. Priest With the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Get Out of My Bed
23. Pickup Truck Full of Forty Minutes

Album Credits

Performance Credits

The Locust   Primary Artist

Technical Credits

The Locust   Composer
Alex Newport   Producer
Sam McPheeters   Cover Art
Crossed Out   Composer
Mark Walters   Photography