On hearing of The Locust's signing to Ipecac, one might be inclined to call this an unexpected pairing. But if you were to take into consideration the label's sheer willingness to work with daring and thought-provoking artists that push the boundaries of modern music, it really shouldn't be that much of a surprise.
For ten years, the members of The Locust have been fascinating crowds with their extremely energetic and highly visual live performances. And over the course of those years, members have been involved in various projects including Holy Molar, Some Girls, Le Shok and Cattle Decapitation among others. For their newest effort, Safety Second, Body Last, The Locust have divided a ten minute track into four movements, which somehow translates into ten song-titles. But rather than try and decipher the mathematics of that, I'll just review the EP as a whole.
Things begin in what is typical fashion from The Locust, blasting drumming and out of control guitars to match. Vocalist Bobby Bray's high pitch screams bring the whole thing together. This lasts maybe 30 seconds before the song diverges into a movement filled with spooky keyboards, Justin Pearson's sci-fi bass sounds, and other eerie effects in the background. This experimentation left me a little perplexed as I didn't see this coming from this band at all. Bray then unleashes series of screeching yells, not unlike The Blood Brothers tandem molded into one, and the pandemonium returns. If it sounds like I'm having a hard time describing this, it's because the first half of this EP is rather different from The Locust's back catalog. Instead of being treated to 30-40 second blasts of intense grind/screamo, there is an extensive use of negative space, including a stretch that nears two minutes towards the middle of the album.
The second half of Safety Second, Body Last, on the other hand, is a return to the style found on Plague Soundscapes and earlier works. Here we encounter a substantial amount of blast beats supplied by Gabe Serbian behind the kit. There is also a greater presence of those silly Casio keyboard sounds that make this style of music so enjoyable. As the song continues on we primarily witness more of that near-incoherent bedlam that is a result of the overlapping of all the parties involved. Though occasionally, as heard earlier on the EP, the song again drifts into brief periods of off-the-beaten-path noise. The second portion of the EP comes on much stronger, in fact the first half is almost forgettable.
To many the sounds of The Locust may be considered nothing more than noise, but if you give a careful ear and actually take the time to listen to the music you can tell that it's not just nonsense, it is calculated chaos. I suppose you could call this accessible by The Locust standards, but the music contained on Safety Second, Body Last is so far out in left field, I can't see this being accepted by the mainstream, ever. Rather than deem it as accessible, I would rather call it The Locust's most diverse material, for that description is much more appropriate.
The funny thing about this review of Safety Second, Body Last is that it really doesn't matter what I have written. The band will continue to make the music they want to play no matter how many critics praise or defame them. If I'm lucky this review might accidentally turn a few people onto one of music's most unique and bizarre musical endeavors.
