From the cheesy horror movie font the band employs for their name to their futuristic costumes to their epically sci-fi take on punk rock, The Locust are an incredibly geeky band. Today, the band releases the vinyl edition of their Molecular Genetics From the Gold Standard Laboratories on Anti-. The album compiles a whopping 44 songs from throughout the band’s early career, including their out-of-print albums The Locust and Plague Soundscapes.
It’s important to note that The Locust is (purposefully) among the most difficult bands to listen to—probably ever—and of those 44 songs, only eight are longer than one minute in length. I was first introduced to them by a defunct zine when I moved to California in 2002. I bought a used copy of 1997’s The Locust at the same record store where I found the zine. I brought it home and opened it, only to find a 3inch CD inside. Luckily, my five-disc changer at the time was capable of playing 3inches and I played the album. The extreme nature of the band confounded me, and I thought of them as a novelty act (especially with the old-school horror concept of the album art, which depicted terrified people fleeing from locusts).
It wasn’t until I moved to San Diego and got to see The Locust perform live that I really gained a huge appreciation for the band. They’re such a technically proficient, well-oiled machine, but have never really gotten their due because their music is impossible to listen to for the majority of the public, and they wear costumes.
Anyway, this compilation is worth picking up if you’re too lazy to try to grab all of the band’s various vinyl releases on eBay and you don’t mind your ears bleeding a little bit. Check out the song “Perils of Believing in Round Squares” from Molecular Genetics below: