Drenched Lands by LOCRIAN

Since their inception in late 2005, Locrian have been honing their sound; working and re-working material; finding the right blend of noise, power electronics, dark ambient, and black metal to work into their sound. Drenched Lands is Locrian’s first full-length studio recording of all new material, and unfolds with an almost narrative structure. It starts with a slow descent into a dark abyss, moving torturedly, gradually rediscovering the light, then leaving you where everything began - completely transformed. The hour-long disc is rounded out by an extended bonus track previously unavailable in any digital format. The black-on-black disc packaged in an arigato pack with a 4-panel insert. Edition of 1000 copies. Co-released by at war with false noise.

Press excerpts:

“Locrian evokes both murky, damp granite tunnels and Phantasm-like marble mist, a gaseous disorientation that works against the tried and true metalisms in a gripping way... with John Carpenter-like analog keyboards and post-rock gloom progressions that are dropped suddenly more than they are built upon. There’s a dogged vibe of disjointedness that lends a mysterious quality, as though each track were the unidentifiable scraps of some unfathomably enormous ghost vessel.”
-Willcoma, Tiny Mix Tapes

“Locrian aren’t just music; they are audible visual art. Andre Foisy and Terence Hannum are known in noise and metal for their innovation. Redefining the meaning of landscape artist, Locrian paint pictures with sound. Abandoned buildings, parking lots, and alleyways fit their humming horizons on Drenched Lands. The music is desolate and distorted. Hidden behind the cover’s dark imagery, it is sometimes beautiful. No wonder At War With False Noise and Small Doses both released this full-length.”
-Jess Blumensheid, Invisible Oranges

“This is Locrian’s first full length release (issued on cool UK label ‘At War With False Noise’) and contains over one hour’s worth of ritualistic electronic paganism. ‘Drenched Lands’ is a cerebral and sinisterly atmospheric blanket of sound that is punctuated with ugly scrapes of overdriven guitar, distorted screams, cymbal crashes, frazzled power electronics and whatever else the dark duo of Andre Foisy and Terence Hannum feel is necessary to summon demons.”
-Adam Stone, The Sleeping Shaman

“I feel like Locrian have really channeled all of their energy into Drenched Lands and it absolutely shows. This is a fucking stunning album that deserves all the praise it's been getting. Now that Locrian have made this ridiculously amazing album, I hope they haven't tired themselves out. They better have something up their sleeves for the follow up.”
-Justin Snow, Anti-Gravity Bunny

"There is a distinct metal edge to Drenched Lands, as much as there is with TenHornedBeast, with black atmospheres pierced by guitars, where voices remain gutteral and words largely indecipherable...Drenched Lands is heavy on the restraint. In lesser hands they could have opted for bombast."
--Tony Dickie, Compulsion

"After several years of conducting one-off musical experiments, oftentimes issued in limited numbers and unconventional formats like vinyl, cassette, or CD-R (or not at all), Chicago's Locrian finally felt ready to record their debut album in 2009's Drenched Lands. But that decision hardly spelled the end of the group's restless musical shape-shifting, as evidenced by the brusque textural disconnect between each of the album's songs (and the art of seamless "sequencing" be damned), beginning with its brief, minimal, and melancholy opening gambit, "Obsolete Elegy in Effluvia and Dross," and its protracted, slowly escalating noise-drone follow-up, "Ghost Repeater." Even by post-metal standards, the pair just don't line up -- on paper -- yet they ultimately make sense in the decontextualized "anything goes" mentality displayed throughout Drenched Lands. This proceeds via always unexpected detours into atmospheric black metal ("Barren Temple Obscured by Contaminated Fogs"), church organ reverie-cum-doomy power chord misery ("Epicedium"), and assiduous feedback sculpting over tolling bells and scything guitar staccatos ("Obsolete Elegy in Cast Concrete"). Technically, Drenched Lands concludes here, but a 30-minute-long bonus offering entitled "Greyfield Shrines" (previously released on vinyl, but virtually impossible to find) reveals what Locrian can do to connect their eclectic creative interests when they choose to, and the terrifyingly cinematic results, climaxing in a mechanical primal scream, are truly awesome to behold. And, as it turned out, Locrian's virginal foray into full-length territory opened a virtual floodgate of inspiration that yielded another pair of very impressive (and largely uncategorizable) albums within a year, those being 2010's Territories and The Crystal World."
--Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music

Locrian was formed in late 2005 by André Foisy and Terence Hannum. Allmusic has described the band as an ”eclectic mixture of black metal, electronics, drone and noise rock”. The band have identified krautrock and '90s death metal as influences as well.

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