The San Diego band's abrasive brand of noise terrorism plays like a home-invasion soundtrack

Being masked and anonymous has its benefits. Just ask the members of the Locust, whose on-stage use of beekeeper-style costumes allows them to mingle undercover in the venues where they play.

"It's awesome, actually," says drummer Gabriel Serbian, on the phone from a tour stop in Tucson, Arizona. "When you're finished no one knows who you are. Like when we were in Detroit, I went into the restroom after we played and I heard one guy say to this other guy, 'That was the worst thing I ever heard' and his friend says, 'You're right, man, that was bullshit. I'm only here 'cuz Dana said we gotta come check it out.' And the first guy says, 'Me too. Fuck that bitch.' "

Serbian takes obvious glee in telling this story. Considering that his band's songs are the aural equivalent of trephination--a medical process that entails removing part of the skull--the Locust is a love-it or hate-it proposition, out to provoke an extreme reaction.

"Well, it's not like a thing we try to do," says the man who gives a backbeat to such moonlight sonatas as "Identity Exchange Program Rectum Return Policy", "Priest With Sexually Transmitted Diseases", and "Anything Jesus Does I Can Do Better". "But why not exploit every possible minute?"

The word abrasive barely touches the serrated surface of the Locust's brand of white noise on Plague Soundscapes, its latest full-length. "Riot music for mechanical insects", "a solution to unwanted houseguests", and "what termites might listen to if they had iPods" give a more detailed picture. Serbian admits to being a fan of the late science-fiction author Philip K. Dick, and it's easy to imagine the inspiration behind the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Paycheck giving his stamp of approval to singer Justin Pearson's dystopian portraits of technology run amok and power corrupted. You have to wonder, though, under what circumstances, barring a home invasion, people might listen to a Locust CD. The San Diego act's music is not something you'd put on while serving the stuffed mushroom caps, for instance.

"It depends--maybe if you're having a crazy dinner party," the drummer says. "Maybe you can find new ways to eat. Extreme eating!"

Despite the seemingly limited audience for one-minute sonic nightmares, the eight-year-old quartet has had its brushes with the mainstream--if you can call B-movie studio Troma, white-trash referee Jerry Springer, and filmmaker John Waters mainstream.

Most of that was at least a couple of years ago, says Serbian, citing singer Pearson's Springer appearance and the time the group was filmed performing at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles for the 2001 movie Citizen Toxie. (The performance didn't make the final cut.) Waters, meanwhile, used a couple of Locust numbers on the soundtrack to 2000's Cecil B. Demented.

A more recent incursion by the Locust into pop culture occurred when Epitaph came calling. But rather than sign with the same imprint as more conventional punk names like Bad Religion and the Dropkick Murphys, the band asked to record for the label's offshoot Anti-, home to such fellow inaccessible noisemakers as Merle Haggard and Tom Waits.

The request was granted, and last year Anti- issued Plague Soundscapes. On Sunday (February 29), the band returns for its second all-ages Mesa Luna show in the past seven months. Bring earplugs. And if you've got anything nasty to say, say it. You never know who might be listening.