Everyone’s favorite experimental drone, doom, and black metal wonders Locrian are on tour right now. The band decided they wanted to give some of our readers a glimpse into what it looks like when a band like Locrian goes on tour, so they wrote up a handful of tour diaries about their time on the road. Check it out, and allow yourself to live vicariously through the band’s adventures.
Providence, RI 07/23 w/ A Monolithic Dome + High Aura’d @ Alchemy
It has been many years since we played in Providence, or, well, technically outside of Providence at Machines with Magnets, but we were looking forward to this show because we were picking up the support for the next two nights, A Monolithic Dome, the new trio out of Elizabeth Color Wheel and our old friend High Aura’d.
Alchemy was run very well, super efficient, even providing for us some nice local beers and a special request for a nice rye whiskey, and they delivered. They even went and dug up a video projector for our visuals. Very much appreciated.
We took a walk around the river area, had something to eat, and met back up with A Monolithic Dome and John, who does High Aura’d.
A Monolithic Dome started the night with a blast of sludgy intensity, almost like if Eyehategod was on 625 Thrash or something, with all three sharing vocal duties. It was a nice surprise from their previous band, and they were incredibly nice people.
High Aura’d was beautiful and haunting with samples and processed guitars reverberating through out the set.
Our set went well, feeling more solid and together, with some room between movements to improvise and take breaths. The audience was amazing, very receptive.
One of the best reconnections was with perhaps one of the most important photographers in America, Brian Ulrich, who did the cover for our album The Clearing. He teaches at RISD now, and it was so exciting to see him and catch up about work, and art. Can’t wait for his new photo-book.
I’m reading a few books on tour because I cannot just read one. Today I spent the most time in Macunaima, a magical realistic novel by Mario Andrade that is trippy and effecting my dreams with its plays on scale, living and dead things, and a jungle full of tricksters.
Boston, MA 07/24 w/ A Monolithic Dome + High Aura’d @ O’brien’s
Being on tour is like an ADHD nightmare; you’re constantly responsible for so many things, of your own, of your band and at home. It’s easy to forget something that needs to be done or that needs to be remembered; where you plugged in your charger? Where is that cable you lent to the opener? Where are your clean pants? Did I pay that bill before I left? I often wake up thinking of things I need to do when I get home, check on the van and try and get more sleep.
We knew Boston was going to be a bust. Literally every band we know said it’s awful. I’m already predisposed to dislike it because of its horrible baseball team. However, this is not OB’Briens itself;everyone there was delightful, but Boston as a town for bands is either house shows, O’Briens, or massive venues we couldn’t even hope to fill unless we were supporting someone. Hopefully that changes soon for the city. There’s nothing really midsize. So, spending the day hanging out in Salem was perfect for our sanity and to gird us for what was to come. We visited the Satanic Temple (pretty clowny—kind of like a Spirit Halloween for pentagrams), ate some clams by the water and found an amazing brewery called Notch that had no IPAs – which was heaven.
Boston is the first city we have never played on this tour, though we were asked, like, 15 years ago to play a noise fest but couldn’t make it work—ironically at O’Briens. So, this was one we had no idea what it would be like outside of what our friends in town told us—which was pretty bleak.
A Monolithic Dome and High Aura’d were already there; they knew the sound person and the bartender and door person at O’Briens were very kind and upfront. But it’s a no frills (no projector) venue—no lights—so it was definitely a head-down and get it done set for us. There’s no visuals, no lights; it’s pretty bare bones. They DID have a new sound system, apparently acquired from Great Scott. But we had fun and played well for our new friends. People came out, met a few online fans which is always nice to put faces to the avatars. A Monolithic Dome slayed,;High Aura’d lowered the temperature. Great night. Saw a few of the Have a Nice Life band at the show which was heartening. It was nice to play with friends for two nights in a row and have a crew at your back while not in your home town.
Had a late night falafel down the street from the venue that was pretty killer.
The other book I am reading on this tour is Jeff Sharlet’s The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, and I was haunted by some of the scenes in the book as we pulled into the sprawling multi-level Motel 6 complex in New Hampshire at 2 a.m. The parking lot full of oversized trucks and work vans condensing in the night, its hallways dingey and cigarette-stained. Families living out of pizza boxes in the hallway. I didn’t sleep well.
Portland, ME 07/25 w/ Ichorclaw + Obsidian Tongue + Imipolex
In the eerie gray of the late morning, the formerly busy parking full of work vehicles and oversize pick-up trucks was empty. Our black Sprinter van sat alone, once surrounded by other vehicles and vans, it felt as if we missed something—a rapture of people on a very different schedule than our group of musicians. We had to get some equipment repaired and purchased for the show in Portland, followed by some good coffee we hit the city found some parking. Portland, ME did not disappoint; Andre met a woman walking her pig, multiple interesting record shops lined the streets and all was right with the world. Even the over-crowded touristy harbor area was entertaining, a fish market full of oysters lobsters and clams and we found a restaurant with good chowder. Eventually, we made our way to the Geno’s Rock Club.
Geno’s Rock Club is a former porn theatre with perhaps the most interesting set up of any venue we’d been in, the floor was slanted toward the stage where once seats probably stood. The stage was essentially a tapered box containing the band. There was also an epic large projector—perfect for our visuals—and a good sound system.
This show was probably the biggest surprise, John at Contemn Light worked really hard to put together a good diverse bill and there was quite a very solid and engaged turnout. First up was Ichorclaw who backed by the more disturbing visuals from Mad God played a haunting synth/noise set that would be home to a classic on Chondritic Sound. Imipolex played a dissonant grind with interesting time signatures and atonality that was pretty complex. Obsidian Tongue was massive, a big black metal trio with a lot of good build ups and atmosphere. For our set it felt really solid in the void of our static projections. Again, it was a great bill.
We hung out for a while at the venue and talked to a lot of friends and fans before we went over to our hotel knowing we needed to get some rest before the long drive to Montreal the next morning.
We work up early to get on the road to Montreal, mainly to give ourselves time to cross the border but we picked a small crossing—though we didn’t know how small it would be. The drive was beautiful cutting through Maine, to northern New Hampshire (Hello, Dixville Notch) and then to Vermont before the tiny two-lane border crossing.
Now, it has been almost a decade since we last played in Canada, and we know that the crossing has changed since then. Both the venues and agents not only disagreed with what was needed to cross with less hassle, but essentially were wrong. Thankfully for us, the line was long, and the tattooed guard although patient with us, realizing counting every shirt and CD would slow down the day. We were honest about everything, and he let us go and wished us a good show.
After we passed the infamous Starliner Towers, we entered the city of Montreal. The city was covered in flies absorbed in a wind of putrid trash. The kind of landscape we loved, full of decay and dirt, a kind you couldn’t even wash off. The flies would cover the graffiti on the outdoor walls at Foufounes Electriques shifting in the rotten breeze and suffocating heat. We loaded in stepping on carpets of maggots the writhed in the streets.
This show was our only opener was a special collaborative performance from our long-time friend Eric and his droney guitar project Thisquietarmy with absolute drumming legend Away from Voivod. I grew up on Killing Technology” and have seen Voivod multiple times but also know that Away is a restless and creative musician making albums of field-recordings and epic thrash. Their set was a gorgeous combination of abstract guitar walls and layers of drums that would mutate in complexity before themselves becoming part of the scree.
Our set worke; the crowd was way up with us right at the edge of the stage and very receptive. You could feel they knew the songs. No visuals, which was disappointing, since even though the stage plot was sent over months ago the line of text was corrupted delaying any visuals.
We hung out for a while at the backyard bar, ignoring the smell of festering trash. Ate poutine before driving to Eric’s apartment in the Quartier International. On the way to, I watched people stumbling through the vacant streets, transform into flies, glimmering their iridescent bodies under the strobing street lamps. We slowed down to hear it cry: “They Came from Within.”
Toronto, Canada 07/27 w/ thisquietarmy @ The Baby G
We missed the evacuation notice. In the morning, Montreal had fled to the highways, clogging all of the evacuation routes slowing traffic to a crawl in any last hope to escape the buzzing clouds of insects. Every Tim Horton’s was a scene of chaos and horror—Fist fights broke out as everyone tried to escape the oncoming trash war of Montreal. In the rearview mirror, Montreal lay beneath a gray halo of flies who had conquered the abandoned city.
Our commute was arduous, crawling amongst the abandoned campers and extending our trip hours. We tend to only drive six hours maximum between shows, so having a five-and-a-half-hour drive extend past seven hours was pushing our resolve.
Toronto was an abandoned city, streets empty, venues abandoned. Some said that it was the fear of the oncoming trash war, others said it was the impending invasion of flies, the manager of the venue said it was the tempting retreats to cottages at pristine lakes far away from the cities in a provence-wide avoidance of art. Regardless, we loaded into the battered Baby G, late and exhausted.
Eric from Thisquietarmy had acquired a projector for this show. Thisquietarmy played a beautiful set of drifting guitar and synth with heavy beats, perfect for the apocalyptic night. We performed for a small group of survivors, maybe one of our best sets, and met a few friends who had fought to make it to the venue before we barricaded the doors from the oncoming deluge.
After we loaded out among the throng of mutant partiers, oblivious to the growing threat, we found Pinata Tacos before beginning our evacuation out of Toronto and into the darkened night.
Locrian’s new album from earlier this year is called End Terrain, and you can order it form Profound Lore Records. Follow Locrian on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for future updates.
Featured photo courtesy of Hillarie Jason
