Locust

This is the title track of American heavy metal band Machine Head's seventh full-length studio album, Unto The Locust. An "Advance Mix" was included on the 2011 Mayhem Festival iTunes sampler, which was released on June 14, 2011. The album was released worldwide on September 27, 2011.

Guitarist Phil Demmel explained the song's meaning to Sonic Excess: "'Locust,' is a concept I came up with, based on a few people I have encountered in my life, just like everybody has. The type of person that just comes into your life under a different guise, under false pretenses, to befriend you, be your buddy, be your man, be on your team, or, you know, to be your lover or whatever. Their goal is just to soak up all your resources and just to drain you of all you've got, whatever you have to offer. Once they're discovered, they fly off into the next crop and drain that of everything. Yeah, it just feels like hell."

It is estimated that the largest swarms of locusts have covered hundreds of miles and consisted of many billions of the insects. In ancient times the trail of destruction led by clouds of locusts resulted in armies being set against them and priests putting them on trial. In the 1870s settlers in the west of America encountered the Rocky Mountain Locust. Already struggling after two years of drought, a massive locust swarm, 1,800 miles long and over 110 miles wide reaped massive destruction causing $200 million in crop damage in Colorado, Nebraska, and several other states.

Prayers were said for deliverance and without warning the locusts disappeared never to return. The insects' extinction has been a source of puzzlement. Recent research suggests that during the large influx of settlers their breeding grounds in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains came to be disturbed. The plowing and irrigation by the settlers of the sandy river beds accidentally destroyed the underground eggs and today North America is the only populated continent without a major locust.