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I first heard about Locrian from Jeremy Bushnell of Rebis Records a couple of years ago, when I was writing a story about the flood of drone projects emerging from Chicago, but I didn’t actually get around to hearing them until recently. There’s certainly an element of drone in Locrian’s music: a steady, rippling hum, produced by a combo of synth, organ, and other electronics, throbs in the background of almost every track. But just as or more important is the guitar action in the foreground. Sometimes the extended lines are skittery and gnarled, and at other times they groan and moan in slow, winding arcs; often the band forgoes the explosive stompbox treatment that seems customary in metal.
The duo recently released Drenched Lands (At War With False Noise/Small Doses), their most varied outing yet. There’s the brittle, muffled melodicism of the brief opener, “Obsolete Elegy in Effluvia and Dross,” the postindustrial feedback and synth drone of “Ghost Repeater,” the hoarse, demonic screams and coiled tension of “Barren Temple Obscured by Contaminated Fogs,” the blend of ethereality, hypnosis, and turbulence on “Epicedium,” and the alternatingly lacerating and chugging guitar noise, soothing synth beds, and submerged lamentations of “Obsolete Elegy in Lost Concrete.” (On second thought, I guess those song titles are a pretty clear cue to file these guys under “metal.”) The CD also includes the entire 30 minutes of “Greyfield Shrines,” previously released last year on vinyl.
