My toxic trait is that I am constantly looking for new music instead of listening to the thousands of albums I already know and love. When I go to the gym, when I walk the dog, when I work around the house, I almost always throw in my earbuds, go to Spotify, and look for something new.

Last week, when I dragged out the mower for the year’s inaugural lawn mowing, I pulled up The Angelic Process’ profile and scanned through the related artists section, and my attention was drawn to Chicago drone metal/doomgaze outfit Locrian and their 2013 album Return to Annihilation. 

Before I had even finished mowing the lawn, I tracked down a copy on Discogs.

Locrian is, according to all general rules of taxonomy, a drone metal band. Chords are sustained for minutes at a time, utilizing texture more than tune. However, there’s a lot more bubbling under the surface than that designation would suggest. Where most drone metal acts use vast sheets of monochromatic noise to create their tapestries, Return to Annihilation is practically technicolor.

There are huge peaks and valleys of dynamic shifts, bright tones, and even some proper melodies. Vocals are rare, but not absent, often delivered in a throaty black metal shriek. Opener “Eternal Return” is a brisk three minutes of blackgaze luminescence. “A Visitation from the Wrath of Heaven” stretches past eight minutes, a stalwart drum beat marching through formless synth drones and idle guitar figures with a determination that’s far more Neu! than SunnO)))…at least until it combusts into a doom dirge in the final moments. The multi-suite title track has an anthemic climax, complete with an actual guitar solo.

Even at its droniest, like the subdued “Exiting the Hall of Vapor and Light,” there’s plenty of movement glimmering in the atmosphere to keep it from feeling immobile. At its most song-like, there’s an atmosphere that seems to exist outside of the instruments—a haze of reverb and overtones that the songs (rare as they are) emerge from. There are moments of true violence, such as the plodding sludge of “Panorama of Mirrors,” as well as some moments of untouched beauty, like the almost folksy “Two Moons”

Then, there’s the epic fifteen-minute closing track “Obsolete Elegies.” It opens with the group lacing some tracks of atmospheric noise through acoustic guitars and pianos. An analog synth then enters with a melody that you might even be able to call a hook, building with a building drum groove and Mogwai-esque guitars before abandoning the song to a single plodding piano line that echoes into several minutes of rising synth drones and strings until a sudden burst of metal catharsis.

There is a very particular kind of beauty that is enhanced by its oddness and ugliness. Some of the most moving records I’ve heard incorporate healthy doses of sounds that many people might call ugly—Sunbather comes to mind—but those tones are used in a way that creates a work of staggering grandeur. Return to Annihilation might be a few shades less accessible than Sunbather (as seen by the perplexed comments on the YouTube videos I linked to), but it uses conventions of a typically harsh and difficult genre to create a gorgeous and moving record in a similar way.

Also, I am honor-bound to confess that I listened to the first three sides at the wrong speed without realizing.