If I remember rightly, it was Snapcase that released the album, Progression Through Unlearning. You may, and rightly so, be wondering what such a fact has to do with The Locust, purveyors of all things frantic and farcical, a loose hardcore association aside. Well, it’s simple: to progress, now, The Locust must do away with their rigidity. They must unlearn what they have become known for, their stiff stage presence and hostile dispositions. Why? Right now, they’ve almost become a parody of themselves.

Once, around the time of the aforementioned record’s release actually, The Locust were forever an exciting proposition, both in the flesh and on hideous, garishly-coloured vinyl. Their start-stop-spazz-splutter-sigh structures were immediate and explosive, sparking 30-second front-row rucks with ease. That aspect of the quartet’s performance hasn’t changed – the crowd surges from back to front, wave-like in its motion, members unafraid to throw the occasional shape – but their taut performance is stale. Their competence can not be doubted, as blast after blast of bass-drum beats and cymbal crashes battle cricket noises and space-age laser effects without our masked protagonists so much as breaking into a sweat, but everything’s so slick now, so perfected, that there’s no semblance of passion to it whatsoever. It’s a certainty of a show, a complete no-brainer. It’s a purely does-what-it-says-on-the-ticket experience, and that’s both sad and absolutely unsatisfying.

Yes, perhaps that’s the idea, and there’s no doubt that many an attendee takes pleasure in expectations being met, however low they were to begin with. Perhaps The Locust are so well-oiled that the autopilot engages without their prior agreement, and one member merely follows the others through the standard evening drill, as predictable as the rippling tide of bodies before them and as regimented as a barracks bedtime routine. The hardcore suck it in, chew it up and spit it about their feet; others, though, look about themselves, wondering where the spark is, wondering when unadulterated chaos will breach the abundant conformity. It never comes. Heads look to the bar instead.

There comes a time in everyone's life, be they band member or board chairman, were assessment is necessary; reassessment, even, if a career has lasted as long as that of The Locust, who’ve been ploughing this dogged furrow into the minds of the young for almost ten years. Now is when our green-suited entertainers must take stock of their situation and formulate a plan: how to push things forward? How does a band so shackled by stylistic chains of their own making not only loosen them to spread their veiny wings a little, but cast them aside entirely and fly forth into the big blue above, able to find breeding grounds anew? Trading on what is now considered almost cliché will not serve them for much longer, and they are in increasing risk of being overshadowed by one-time pretenders who have taken their own template and twisted it into something both new and beautifully grotesque. The Locust must unlearn to progress, or die of creative starvation.

They need to buck up their ideas or get the hell out of my cornfield.