Founded in late 2005, Locus Control is another band from that small suburb village at the North-East of Kortrijk, Belgium. You may remember that Immanent Distance was from the same place...and although both band have a thing about progressive music, they still are quite different. You see, the bands from which LC's members (guitarists Babak Mohammad & Koen Biesbrouck, bassist Stefaan Bonte and drummer/ samples provider Ben Mussely) take influence mostly, are Tool, Metallica, Rush and Kyuss, and the music they make is a primarily instrumental mixture of Stoner, Metal, and Progressive Rock.
In 2010 the band puts out its first release, the 3-track mini-album 287, which (premiered at the Gentse Feesten – sorry, that doesn't translate well; just know that it's a town-wide music festival held over a couple of weeks in the town of Gent) gets rather positive reviews in Belgium's leading magazines Rock Tribune, Rif Raf, and Mindview. With online reviews applauding the band's live performances as well, the guys eventually manage to play some 15 annual gigs in youth and cultural centers, and at a couple of small festivals.
For their debut full-length, the band took higher aim, as far as both composition and production are concerned, and the guys therefore entered the Pittem based Barefoot Studio to record the album. The result is an album on which each instrument can be heard separately without disturbing any of the others. Not fearing the experiment of “song structure”, the band included spoken word vocals to 3 of the album's tracks. Two of those were performed by friends of the band : Benny Hugelier (also writing his own dark lyrics) on the song “Ten To One”, and Brenda Bertin doing french spoken word on the album closing “Douzaine Tranches De Vie”. Vocals to the third “song” “Snowdon Alt. 900 Ft” were done by the band's own Stefaan Bonte (whom also wrote the lyrics to both that track and “Douzaine...”). With only 6 tracks on the album for an album length of almost 38 ½ minutes, you'll understand that average track length is relatively long, yet I defy each and everyone listening to this album for find even a fleeting 5 seconds in which (s)he might get bored with the music overall! Oh, a small deviation from the average track length comes with the short acoustic (just two guitars too!) “Neon”, which lasts only a mere 84 seconds. On the other scale of track length, there's “Snowdon...”, which clocks in at just under 10 ½ minutes!
On February 15 of this year, the band kicked off its Attavita Release Tour, which is to lead LC throughout the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. In the meantime, the album's first two songs, “Six Degrees” and “Snowdon Alt. 900 Ft”, were played on Belgium's national radio station Radio Brussel's program Zwaarste Show, resulting in many positive reactions (in fact, the second song was played by popular demand). For your introduction to the band's music, surf to (www.) locuscontrol.be, where you'll find links to the band's pages on facebook , SoundCloud , vi.be and YouTube. The facebook will give you the band's story (from which the above was culled), and some 9 videos (of which 3 are shorter than 2 minutes – studio excerpts, most probably), the SoundCloud page will give you the radio emission excerpts, the complete 287 EP (apparently both as a whole and as separate tracks), and a sample preparation of the Attavita album. The link to vi.be will give you the radio emission excerpts, the separate songs from the EP, and a full-length of “Douzaine Tranches De Vie”. The band also has a MySpace page, but that is quite outdated, and only holds the EP's songs!
At any rate, here's a highly enjoyable band indeed! Of course, I'm somewhat prejudiced, as I've always loved instrumental music anyway, but I suspect many of you who will have gone through the trouble of reading throughout this review, and having been tempted to indeed listen to some of the band's music, will find sufficient reasons to actually contact the band, and purchase the album off 'em!