Moths & Locusts are diehard space-rock explorers hailing from the pulsating heart of Vancouver Island. They create dynamic, heavy, melodic, fuzz-drenched explorations of the inner and outer cosmos inspired by their love of psychedelia, Krautrock, science fiction, vinyl records, and delay pedals. Trance inducing dream-scapes intertwine with visceral blazing garage rock bangers and all elements of the intervening spectrum are sampled. Always over the groove, always. The early years of Moths & Locusts brought a steady stream of west coast shows and two self-produced 7"s, one split with Victoria's New Colors. The band's passion for unique physical products saw a buzzing lock-groove on the first single and a rare concentric grooves approach to the split where two versions of Nero's Tale lie side-by-side and the luck of the needle drop determines which one is played. In 2011 the band set up camp at the Noise Floor Studio and with engineer Jordan Koop at the controls recorded a flood of material with an album's worth of arranged songs and hours of improvised jams and experiments. The following months found the boys in their home studios and their beloved jam space "The Republic of Doom" layering, arranging and whittling down the hours of audio to the essential moments. The first release of this material was a 12" 45rpm EP of a sprawling jam Escape from Sector C where the B-side is a vinyl-only version of the same song played in reverse. It is affecting both ways, but differently so. The epic first full-length album was released on NoiseAgonyMayhem Records in 2013 and given a suitably epic title - Mission Collapse in the Twin Sun Megaverse. The gatefold cover and coloured vinyl are works of art unto themselves. The album was very well- received and spent time on Earshot's national charts. 2013 also saw the band sharing the stage with some high profile veterans, starting with psych-prog heavyweights Rangda, and rocking the main stage at the Quadrapalooza festival. The summer of 2013 brought an unbelievable opportunity - Moths & Locusts was the backbone of a psych-rock orchestra, including members of Colliding Canyons and Wolf Parade, backing legendary Can vocalist Damo Suzuki. A multi-track recording of the improvised set to a sold-out crowd beautifully captured the creative alchemy of the night and later that year the 2XLP Seven Potatoes - Damo Suzuki Live in Nanaimo was distributed to krautrock devotees around the world. Nanaimo sounds like “seven potatoes” in Japanese. Two studio sessions followed - one at Lap of Luxury in Victoria in the fall of 2014 and to the re-located Noise Floor on Gabriola Island in the spring of 2015. Another mountain of music was distilled over months in the laboratory to extract the mind altering substances contained within and enhance it with synths through distinct effects chains and input from friendly collaborators. More highlights of this period included headlining the National Campus and Community Radio Conference showcase with The Backhomes, opening for godfathers of grunge Mudhoney, and a packed Vancouver show with Dan Boeckner's band Operators. After the Operator’s show, Jeremy Schmidt (Black Mountain, Sinoia Caves) pegged Moths & Locusts sound as being like “biker disco” - a favourite original genre tag. A 2014 Vancouver Island show with Canadian journeyman Ian Blurton's new band Public Animal was a meeting of kindred spirits and plans for a split 7" were realized in 2015 timed with a shared western Canadian summer tour. The outro of each band's song is the intro to the other's making a seamless circle of sound. The tour was a total success and included live to air sessions on CFUV in Victoria and CITR in Vancouver. After the tour Moths & Locusts set to work on finishing LP #2, Helios Rising, released in May 2016 on NoiseAgonyMayhem Records and Sunmask Records. The was asked by upstart UK-based psych label Eggs in Aspic to contribute a volume to their global psych cassette series. A free-form studio session with producer Rob the Viking (of Canadian hip hop crew Swolen Members) yielded a mountain of sounds that were sliced, diced and re-configured into the twisting trip of an LP - Intro / Outro.

Past and present projects include: Carlito Verde, Custom Trip, The Cymatics Research Institute, The Daytonas, Death Militia, Early Man, Fantastic Four, Faux Hotel, Fences of Fairview, The Happys, Northland Lumber,  The Sheds, Sing Along with Tonto, Substack, etc.

"Traveling between ethereal effervescence and mind bending sonic tsunamis, Mission Collapse in the Twin Sun Megaverse goes straight for the third eye and converts precious grey matter into a psychotropical fruit smoothie" BC Musician Magazine

"Motionless yet stormy rhythmic changes fuzz your perception of time. ... Just when you’ve figured out the feeling that  has swallowed your body, another clean and heavy riff presents a solitary black hole from which gravity prevents any of your insanity from escaping." weirdcanada.com

“The verbosely-titled debut LP from Nanaimo’s local psych-rockers is as ambitiously-named as it is ambitiously orchestrated. The name brings about images of some sci-fi rock epic, and to some degree this could very well be the soundtrack to an intergalactic outing. Musically, the album draws from the well of psych-rock and post-rock, with a heavy focus on guitars above all else. The band also doesn’t seem to factor in restraint — and that isn’t a bad thing. A band that isn’t afraid to put eight-minute tracks alongside two-minute ones shows a certain amount of courage.” grayowlpoint.com

It has a cosmic shoegaze vibe at times and straight up space rock at others...but it all amounts to an immersive ten minutes filled with fuzzy guitar....joy! … It has pretty much everything one could want in a release, it steps up the tempo and density when it needs to but combines this with more introspective moments that verge on ethereal at times. Dayz of Purple and Orange

A brave quartet that is not afraid to experiment, within heavy reverb tubes, metallic agreements soiled by space dust, intelligent sound interpretations and without force. In their music, melodic neurotic and aggressive lines collide with the groove, the sensitivity of the riffs and a research that seems, from 2013 debut, has made considerable interesting progress that are sublimate in this brand new “Helios Rising”. There are obsessive riffs, almost of cruel beauty, feedback stretched up to implode within the melodic constructions. Magmatic explosions barely contained by the ferocious low mindful of Lemmy lesson, but also influenced by the pounding beat of Geezer. Dandysme

The result is indeed a very powerful set of songs … combining melody and power to create something that is both heavy and anthemic … Yes they rock out, but the unexpected and the experimental is never far away. Be clear this is not experimental music per se, but is is the sound of a band bending and stretching what they are playing, and moulding into something that is superbly well-crafted and satisfying… Moths and Locusts seem to all the time be looking for new ways around established patterns to create soundscapes that are at once familiar yet somehow other. Backseat Mafia

a force of nature and makes a beeline for the jugular, never letting go until the end…It is a shape-shifting, time traveling tapestry for a spaceman wending his way through the cosmos. Highly recommended for fans of psych jams and generally groovy and tripped out tunes. Echoes and Dust

Helios Rising“ ist ein erstklassiges und facettenreiches Album geworden. Es ist voll von spielerischen Ideen und Freiheiten, aber auch von Trauer und Melancholie. Rock Blog Blue Spot

On Helios Rising mind bending psychedelia intertwines with grunge metal, punk, garage rock, surf, German avant-garde, Sun Ra, prog, James Blood Ulmer and a multitude of other influences. The music here is trance inducing. The vocals sound devotional, even prayer like, as if sung by cosmic monks. BC Musician Magazine

"for me is exactly what I want my music to be about ... a remarkable forty minutes of music that is so varied and expansive that it feels much longer because there is so much going on here. This is because ‘Intro/ Outro’ is the sound of a band taking chances, the sound of a band who are not afraid to experiment, and the sound of a band on the move." Psych Insight

"Moths & Locusts have a real game-changer of an album on their hands here..they have subverted the psych form to create a beast of many different colours." Dayz of Purple and Orange

Reviews of Intro / Outro:

Reviews of Helios Rising:

Reviews of Mission Collapse in the Twin Sun Megaverse: