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I’m not a die-hard listener of The Locust, so I wasn’t really expecting too much when I came across a copy of their new album. I did much prefer Safety Second, Body Last (SSBL) to any of their other stuff — not just because it’s more accessible, but I just like the overall tone and sound of that album more. The first song from the album, ‘AOTKPTA’, really had me excited. It was really dark and slow, somewhat comparable to the stuff off of SSBL, but alas, I was wrong.

I shouldn’t say the rest of the album is disappointing. Like I said, I’m not a die-hard fan by any means, but the rest was certainly still tolerable (Although, admittedly, not for much more than any given 30 minutes in a day.) The rest of the album was pretty typical for The Locust: some random-sounding blasts of drumming, distorted synth, and then some indiscernible guitar parts. One thing I did notice, however, was that their mixing and overall production had come a bit of a ways. SSBL was done really well in my opinion, but in this album I could actually understand some of what they were screaming incessantly about. I don’t think is because they stopped doing it in their typical way, but because it was just mixed a bit better.

As I normally proclaim, if nothing else the song titles are fun in the typical fashion: ‘The Unwilling… Led by the Unqualified… Doing the Unnecessary’, ‘We Have Reached An Official Verdict: No One Gives A Shit’, ‘One Manometer Away From Mutually Assured Relocation’, etc. I wish I would’ve had access to some of the lyrics, because reading along is half the fun with The Locust.

To me, The Locust is nothing more than a nice novelty. It’s fun, but it’s still a novelty. Although, they become way more interesting once you see some live clips and just watch the drummer in amazement.

In response to Dillon: Saying, “you have to be VERY into this band to give them a good review,” is the first problem already. A “good” review (which, I am not by any means claiming that this is an example of one) should be unbiased, and most certainly from a perspective that is not “uberfanboi.” I wouldn’t go as so far to call any album from one of my super ultimate favourite bands “the most important” or “the best,” because I would immediate realize the implications of that. The implications being that it sounds really naive. To repeat and provide addendum: to me, The Locust is nothing more than a nice novelty — this should not be confused, however, as it “withlies” (sic) on a different part of the novelty spectrum as that which comes from the bowels of MTV and the like. All in all, you probably just misread the tone of the article, or you need an alternative perspective.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 8:54 am and is filed under Music, Album Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.