L O C R I A N

Review Excerpts for The Clearing

“Plenty of bands play music that sounds dark, but few can make every note bleed black and breathe smoke. Count Locrian as part of that select circle…The Clearing could be Locrian's most nuanced record so far. Throughout, they use slow, far-off sounds rather in-your-face noise to thicken the atmosphere. A frozen piano line, distant drum roll, or shadowy bass loop is often all the group needs to forge a palpable mood….Still, what impresses most about The Clearing is not specific turns or isolated moments, but the overwhelming mood it creates. That's what makes the album title apt-- Locrian's dark atmospheres aren't empty spaces, but stark traces of something that was there not long before. In other words, they're as good at creating negative spaces as they are at filling them in. Even when they get so subdued that they approach silence, you can hear ghosts echoing in their void.”
7.4/10
--Marc Masters, Pitchfork

“Shades of Ummagumma-era Floyd emerge as opener “Chalk Point” lays down the melancholy and takes its sweet time to unfold. And when Locrian have the legroom to stretch out, on the 20¬minute drone/psych-fest of the title track, real magic happens.”
9/10
--Johnson Cummins, Montreal Mirror

“The Clearing shows how well Locrian has become at balancing their musical impulses with their raw, chaotic noise background. The two come together perfectly throughout this album, which does a great job at defying genre conventions and any preconceptions. This is a wonderful balance of dissonance and melody, light and dark, melody and noise.”
--Creaig Dunton, Brainwashed

“Like Fennesz covering black metal beneath a mountain of ash, or a warped krautrock LP played at 78 RPMs with the volume only halfway up, The Clearing shows Locrian at their most disparate and unusual, eliciting sensations of dread and unease.”
--Jon Rosenthal, The Inarguable

“Countless musicians have tried to imitate [Locrian’s] brand of dense, blackened experimentalism, but Locrian remains in a class all their own. It’s safe to assume that [The Clearing] will raise the bar even higher, cementing them as the reigning kings of dark drone.”
--OMG Vinyl

[from the article “Locrian Clear Up Nothing on The Clearing”]
“…The Clearing contains some deeply fucked music, and no number of forlornly strummed acoustic guitars (“Coprolite”) can offset the disquiet that is at the core of the album. Droning synths, power electronics and guitars overlap in quiet but unyielding dissonance…Not much of anything happens melodically in a Locrian song, but Foisy, Hannum and Hess are experts at building inertia out of slow accretions of sound…Less a band than three poets of sonic desiccation, Locrian actually get bleaker the more they layer their soundscapes.
Is The Clearing a metal album? Absolutely not. Even the two minutes of blastbeats and howling in the middle of “Augury in an Evaporating Tower” are just another part of the song’s stew. But there’s a reason why Locrian collaborate regularly with members of Nachtmystium, Yakuza and Velnias. They access the alienated moods and harsh outlook of metal’s blackest wings in distinct but complementary ways. Their sound accesses terror without rubbing our faces in it. Accessible? Not unless you listen to Merzbow on your way to work. Riveting? Completely.”
4 out of 5 horns
--Satan Rosenblum, Metal Sucks.net

“Locrain are at the top of the dark experimental music heap these days…What is so stunning about "The Clearing" is how diverse the album is overall, even as it all sounds a part of a whole. The band explores a variety of approaches throughout, each successfully casting a consistent mood that leaves the listener feeling like they have taken a singular journey by record's end. If "The Crystal World" announced the presence of Locrian as the band to pay attention to, "The Clearing" solidifies their position as a powerhouse. Locrian is THE band that matters right now, and if you didn't know that already, "The Clearing" makes damn sure you do.”
--Jason Bunch, Skeletons and Candy

“Terrifying: Trauma without kitsch…There’s no doubt that Locrian is a group that has mastered the art of imbuing their art with maximum psychological charge. The songs of The Clearing wouldn’t be out of place in a B horror movie or spine-tingling sci-fi flick. That said, the band manages to pull of its sense of extreme trauma without sounding kitsch or derivative of a bygone era of leather jackets and spiked collars. These guys mean every bit of what they’re playing. And that’s terrifying.”
--Hannis Brown, Tokafi

“Locrian have found themselves firmly in the “If you haven’t heard them yet STOP EVERYTHING” category. Every album they put out seems like it’s the best thing they’ve ever done. Which is true. But I don’t know how they do it. And The Clearing is no different. It is literally the best thing they’ve ever done. It’s massively evil & evilly massive… Like running up the down escalators of hell, finally getting to the top and finding Locrian screaming at you with an eternal wall of speakers behind them and they kick you in the face back down. Unbelievably massive & evil & fucking AWESOME. Do not miss this.”
--Justin Snow, Anti-Gravity Bunny

“[O]n The Clearing they are masters of economy, and have formed their album into an utterly unique and precise sound-work that, even as it evokes so much, feels remarkably original — in particular, amid the bland ‘experimentation’ that happens in so much US black metal — and continuously draws this listener, entranced and amazed and a little frightened, back into itself as a singular, haunted entity.”
4.5/5
--Nathan Shaffer, Tiny Mix Tapes

“‘The Clearing’ itself is utterly sublime. A steely pulsing spine worthy of prime John Carpenter supports the entire structure, around which circle drones of varying pitches and throat-tearing, screaming howls. The entire thing just oozes menace and dread. Crushing sub bass creeps in over time and the track begins to warp under such heavy gravity. This feels elemental, like the crushing, severe force of Geburah, fifth sephiroth – sphere – of the Tree of Life, bearing down upon the raw energies of creation in an attempt to destroy all impurities. ‘The Clearing’ sounds and feels like the grinding of worlds, the cosmic gears of Jack Kirby’s vision, vast and awe-inspiring.
Beautifully minimal, perfect in construction, devastating in execution.
The trio of Hannum, Foisy and Hess have truly found themselves with this recording... The Clearing IS Locrian.”
--Paul Robertson, The Sleeping Shaman