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Locrian, 'Arc Of Extinction'

Locrian always wants to show us something new — or at least rearrange the context of what heavy means, or even what sound means. The trio, together for a decade and now based in Chicago and Baltimore, is at the height of its holistic metallic powers on Infinite Dissolution. It's a record that stretches between the lush prog-rock of Popol Vuh, the industrial noise of Coil and the epic black metal riffing of Darkthrone.

The sublime "Arc of Extinction" opens the album with chaotic droning doom and finds its way to the ecstasy of a triple-guitar attack. Raymond Salvatore Harmon, who made the 3-D video for Locrian's "At Night's End," provides kaleidoscopic visuals for the track that look like the world through Predator's eyes. He writes, "The video was made through compositing layers of glitched interactive 3-D objects with shot footage in the wild."

Infinite Dissolution is largely inspired by what scientists call the "sixth mass extinction," and the band writes that the video's environmental disruptions push the album's themes forward.

Here the use of optics is glitched and interwoven marring the natural scenes and generating hypnotic visions that decay and show us less of our world and more of our internal state which sits perfectly with the themes not only of the track "Arc of Extinction" but of the whole album Infinite Dissolution.

Infinite Dissolution is out now on Relapse.

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