Locrian Gives An Update On Their 'Return To Annihilation'
By Jon Graef in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 28, 2013 8:00PM
Ahead of their first local live performance in two years, ambient black metal trio Locrian talked to us via email about their forthcoming Relapse Records debut, Return To Annihilation. If nothing else, you’ll find out how one does exactly that.
Band member André Foisy first wrote to us about the progress of the album, which Locrian recorded with Greg Norman at Electrical Audio studio last summer and was mastered by Jason Ward at Chicago Mastering Service. Artwork and design are both being finalized, and the work will include photos from Richard Misrach.
No firm release date has yet been set, but Foisy wrote that it would indeed be spring. Foisy then mentioned, as he did in the initial news release for the album last fall, that Return To Annihilation would have a progressive rock bent to it.
"Personally, I think that the more prog oriented parts of the album were influenced by the early King Crimson and Genesis’s ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.’ There are a few themes on the album that come from our earlier releases, but we changed them a bit and used them in different ways for this new album,” Foisy wrote.
Foisy also mentioned that the lyrics to Annihilation were inspired by apocalyptic science fiction novel Dhalgren, written Samuel R. Delany. The cryptic, episodic novel was once described by William Gibson as “a riddle that was never meant to be solved.”
Curious about Dhalgren and its relationship to Annihilation, not to mention the prolific band’s creative process as a whole, Chicagoist sent some questions to Foisy, who in turn passed them onto band member Terence Hannum. His answers and our questions, sent over several emails, have been re-purposed into the following q-and-a.
Chicagoist: What inspiration did you draw from Dhalgren? Is that where the phrase "Return To Annihilation" comes from? (Also: what does that title mean? It's very evocative to me, in a "Mad Max" sort of way.)
Terence Hannum: Well, in Dhalgren, it is like this city that changes— the sky has two moons, like the earth is in the midst of some unspoken cataclysm. It could be environmental or it could be nuclear. You never really find out, and Dhalgren is beautiful with how unclear it is.
I think that is a huge problem with so much science fiction. It tends to just like imagine something crazy and then try and explain itself the entire time. I find that boring and pedantic. In Dhalgren, we focus on this bizarre cast of characters trying to live their lives amidst crushing uncertainty. To me, it roots it more in reality that way, even though it is structured like this strange apocalyptic fever dream.
The title Return to Annihilation is a track on the album and a lyric in the four-part track “Obsolete Elegies” in the section ‘Isostasy.’ It just kept coming up—how can you return to something that was obliterated? Which really is the main theme of the album, the earth just changing to being inhospitable [like in Dhalgren]. I mean we're doing it anyway. It doesn't need more help.
But the other themes through out the album derive from Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project. So somewhere in [these themes] is the nature of our consumption, the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts and actions in our lives; that of the person disgusted by a destruction they create via the nature of capitalism; however, we can't stop it.
Chicagoist: What is the concept for the artwork/design? Are they also reflective of Dhalgren's themes?
TH: Well, the artwork has been a bit under wraps for a while, but it will be photos by Richard Misrach. I have been a fan of Richard Misrach's work for quite some time now. I think he is not only an amazing artist, but also someone whose activism and concern is equally in check. I find that admirable.
So he did this book for Aperture called Petrochemical America for an exhibition at the High Museum and it was about Cancer Alley, in Louisiana. Some of the images looked like they came from another planet. Just uncanny—like not just how can this even be in the USA, but how can this be Earth? To me, they reflected a vision about a civilization bent on its own destruction or cutting itself off or just not even thinking about an imminent end it was bringing on itself. So they visualized what I felt was the sublime contradiction of annihilation. Beautiful and horrifying.
Chicagoist: Something I've been curious about in general: I was listening to "Greyfield Shrines" the other day, and was wondering: How long does it take to write a half-hour piece like that? Is something like that the result of one take, or does it come slowly and surely over the course of hours, days, etc? What was the creative process like for this album?
TH: That was one take live on [Pure Hype WHPK 88.5 FM], improvised around a very small riff André wrote in the radio studio. We just had some time to fill and went for it. It was our first real expression of how we would work. Take it slow. Let it build. Can it be sustained or does it fall apart? I do remember listening to it later that night and feeling like it was a big step for us.
Return to Annihilation was different. We definitely had these ideas about it having two parts and tracks with multiple parts to it, like the progressive-rock bands we admired. We had some songs written and a few riffs and ideas but it really came together around telling a story and the overarching theme. What should go next? What needs to happen here in the scope of the album to tell the bigger story we wanted to tell? There were a lot of questions that were answered right there when we were recording. But we were all focused on it.
Focus on Locrian as they play March 12th at the Burlington.