Locust Abortion Technicians
The making of Insect Warfare’s World Extermination
When discussing game-changing late-’00s grindcore platters, conversation usually gets a bit awkward, people quickly trying to piece together Pig Destroyer’s discography in their head, wondering what year that band’s thrash started being more noteworthy than their grind. Sure, on a smaller, regional scale, bands were still blasting with as much passion as ever, but the global grindcore scene was in a bit of a post-Nasum depression in terms of seismic shifts.
But there was one massive record, and it alone signalled a huge wake-up call to the grind scene, even though it had everything going against it: It was nearly all lost due to a recording-session computer crash, the band broke up shortly after its release and Earache Records got involved, which unfortunately when it comes to extreme music, rarely seems to end well.
That record was World Extermination, the only full-length by Houston, TX’s Insect Warfare.
The band—Beau Beasley on guitars and, on record, bass; vocalist Rahi Geramifar; octopus-man drummer Dobber Beverly—managed to rectify the computer crash situation and release the beast, 20 songs of massive, streamlined grindcore destruction that came out on the always-reliable 625 Thrashcore label in October 2007. The breakup in mid-2008 may have quieted the album’s impact at the time, but Earache brought it back to a wider audience the next year, and to a wider array of stress about legalities that no grindcore band should ever need to worry about. The band reunited to spread the good word in 2009, again in 2016 and one final time in 2017.
Today, we’re honored to let this record—20 songs, 22 and a half minutes, as it should be—steamroll its way into our Hall of Fame, standing tall next to kindred spirits like Discordance Axis, who, along with a huge dose of powerviolence bands, were a massive influence on Insect Warfare.
Today, the sounds of World Extermination force the Hall’s gates open, reminding us all of what matters: extremity matters; pure intent and focus matter; grindcore matters. It’s the never-ending campaign for musical destruction, and, in 2007, Insect Warfare were carrying the torch for it, then destroying the torch, and then making sure things were still not loud enough, still not fast enough. And it mattered.
Today, and always, World Extermination matters.
Need more classic Insect Warfare? To read the entire seven-page story, featuring interviews with the members who performed on World Extermination, purchase the print issue from our store, or digitally via our app for iPhone/iPad or Android.
