San Diego's Locust, featuring vocalist and bassist Justin Pearson,
keyboardist Joey Karam,
Cattle Decapitation's drummer Dave Astor
and guitarist Bobby Bray, coined a unique brand of
synth-driven progressive, noisy hardcore and grindcore.
The Locust (Gold Standard Laboratories, 1998), compiling 20 songs (none lasting longer than two minutes),
introduced their aesthetic of brief explosive outbursts of dementia, something
like
Teenage Jesus & The Jerks with
Allen Ravenstine on synthesizers.
Musical highlights include the 36-second Brand New Set of Teeth and
Backbones of Jack Asses,
with peaks of epileptic ferocity in
the 34-second How to Build a Pessimistic Lie Detector, the 38-second Extra Piece of Dead Meat and
and the 48-second Kill Roger Hedgecock.
The spastic and childish fits of Nice Tranquil Thumb in Mouth and
Normal Run of the Muck,
or dissonant and lopsided songs like Straight from the Horse's Mouth
and
Twenty-Three Full-Time Cowboys,
better represent the spirit of the project.
Astor was replaced in 2001 by another Cattle Decapitation alumnus, Gabe Serbian.
The carnage of
Plague Soundscapes (Anti-, 2003), containing 22 songs,
sounded even more furious and savage than on the debut
(Late For A Double Date With A Pile Of Atoms In The Water Closet,
How To Become A Virgin,
Solar Panel Asses,
Teenage Mustache).
A funkier bass lines, crunchier guitar riffs and almost comic synth noises
even coalesced in
more musical structures (Priest With The Sexually Transmitted Diseases Get Out Of My Bed,
Pulling The Christmas Pig By The Wrong Pair Of Ears,
Twenty-Three Lubed Up Schizophrenics With Delusions Of Grandeur,
and especially Anything Jesus Does I Can Do Better a cross between a videogame soundtrack and Jesus Lizard).
A temporary peak of instrumental madness is Wet Dream War Machine.
The EP Safety Second, Body Last (2005), containing just two lengthy
pieces, and
New Erections (Anti-, 2007), containing several three-minute "songs",
allowed more breathing space in between the sonic grenades (Aotkpta),
thanks also to the mature style of
Joey Karam's synthesizer and Gabe Serbian's drumming.