Critics who praise doom-drone noiseniks Locrian for evoking "elemental human dread" are missing the mark. To be sure, the local duo can cast dark, foreboding, ominous structures with the best of them. But Locrian trade mostly in disconsolate melancholy, coaxing funereal dirges out of a controlled cacophony of minor-scale guitar lines, mountains of feedback and distortion, and droning waves of sound. There's an anguish, an existential sadness, underlying the discord — a welcome respite from the doom-for-doom's sake that drives much of their metal-offshoot scene. Tonight, the outfit ends its cross-country tour with a free show at the Empty Bottle — and celebrates the vinyl release of their elegiac LP Drenched Lands.
– Suzanne Niemoth
