The Locust
The Peel Sessions [Reissue]
THREE ONE G
It would be easy to review this reissue of The Locust’s 2001 Peel Session on just its song titles alone. In fact, you could review it by using nothing but its song titles in a random order to create a weird, anarchic sort of poetry that would sum it up pretty well: “The Half Eaten Sausage Would Like to See You in His Office” / “Twenty-Three Lubed-Up Schizophrenics with Delusions of Grandeur” / “Priest with the Sexually-Transmitted Diseases, Get Out of My Bed” / “Gluing Carpet to Your Genitals Does Not Make You a Cantaloupe.”
That’s just a quarter of the 16 songs included on this album, only two of which run longer than a minute, all of which practically sound like their titles. It’s not quite over before you know it—not least because the depth and texture of these schizoid grindcore songs belies their length—but the energy is ferocious and breakneck. And while the band’s three studio albums and myriad EPs capture that freneticism well, there’s something particularly visceral and raw about these recordings, a bristling energy that runs through them all to maximize the weird terror and energy that drives them.
First released in 2010, this reissue is part of the 31st anniversary of Three One G, the label set up by Locust frontman Justin Pearson. It’s been remastered by Nathan Joyner, which only adds to the kinetic, untamed insanity at their heart. And while these kinds of releases are so often for fans only, rather than a wider audience, there’s something about The Peel Sessions that elevates it to being a more important body of work that can stand—or perhaps flail violently—alongside those studio albums. The fact that it runs on pure chaos makes this quarter of an hour even more pertinent some quarter of a century after it was recorded. A breathless rush of vigor that few bands have ever rivaled.
