Locrian at The Metro Gallery (19-Jul-2024)

See the black sun rise in the solar lodge. (FUJIFILM X-T4 ƒ/2.8 1/125 55mm ISO6400)

Since becoming interested in heavier and harsher music about 15 years ago, I have slowly gravitated towards its weirder and more unorthodox fringes. I credit the drone metal band Locrian as one of the bands that introduced me to the more experimental side of the metal landscape with their unique combination of brooding drones, beautiful post-rock guitar passages, electronics, and harsh noise. I came upon the band with their 2010 album The Crystal World, named after the J.G. Ballard novel of the same name in which a physician travels to Central Africa to treat leprosy, only to find the jungle there slowly turning to crystal, enveloping everything in its path. The album convinced me to read the novel, and I was amazed how well the album fit the tone of the novel, one of bleak desolation, but a strangely beautiful and hopeful desolation. I have been enthusiastically following the band since, watching them continue to explore the themes of urban decay and humanity’s slow march towards extinction. The band released a new album in April of 2024, End Terrain, and I was very excited to see they had a string of tour dates to accompany the release. I was fortunate to see them play at the Metro Gallery in Baltimore on July 19, 2024. My brother Eric and I were able to take a bunch of pictures of the event, and want to share some of them.

Hole Dweller and Dungeon Synth

Despite my love of angry and abrasive music, I have started to become more and more interested in somber and reflective music as a respite from the harshness of my normal listening regime. This interest arose from my discovery of experimental drone metal bands like Locrian, who were mixing echoing drones with melodic post-rock guitar lines, all supplemented with crackling noise, guitar feedback, and sparse percussion. Locrian, along with other minimalistic drone bands like Earth, helped show me that there was a whole world of compelling music outside of more conventional, vocally-orientated music. This discovery had me scouring music blogs and websites for similar work and the forerunners of the style, and somewhere in those searches I learned about the genre of ambient music.