Documenting the history of the Post-Metal band, Arsenic Solaris is happy to reveal the details on label’s upcoming big release. Limited to 200, “Land of Ruins” is available for pre-orders from now on.
The set gathers recordings made between 2005 and 2009, the years when André Foisy and Terence Hannum built Locrian piece by piece in Chicago, long before the band’s records for Relapse and Profound Lore. “We didn’t know what we wanted, so many of the recordings are live or radio show live sets.” – explains Terence Hannum looking back now.
In its first years, Locrian released music in a steady, scattered stream of small editions, self-released runs, and splits, some made in quantities of 25 or 30 copies and sold at shows or through a handful of distros. “We were experimenting and trying things. And that was the audience; 15 people was honestly ambitious for who wanted to actually listen to our CD-R. It also gave me a chance as an artist to make interesting designs and artwork and be ambitious, but handmade. In small editions, that was more feasible.” – continues Hannum.
The recordings pushed toward Drone, Noise, and Black Metal at once, often within a single piece. Andee Connors, writing for the aQuarius Records shop, reached for the phrase “tech-drone metal” to describe one of those early releases, which was about as close as anyone got to a genre.
“When we started Locrian, I was bored with a lot of the hardcore and metal I’d grown up around,” says Foisy. “So much of it followed the same template, and I wanted to break out of that. Locrian was our way of making something that didn’t have to fit anywhere.”
By the time “Drenched Lands” (2009) and “Territories” (2010) brought that energy into album form, most of the material that led there had long since disappeared into collectors’ shelves and dead links. “Land of Ruins” brings it back together. Its five discs, each named after the “land of” motif that ran through the band’s early releases, move chronologically across nearly five hours of music. They begin with “Setting Yr Jetta on Fire,” the 2005 debut, and the early “CD-R II,” including a previously unreleased full-length version of “Chladni,” then turn to the hour-long drone of “Freehand Plateaus from III” (2006). From there they follow “Visible/Invisible” (2007) and “Plague Journal” (2008), both paired with extended live versions, and close with “Exhuming the Carnival / Burying the Carnival” (2008) and “Endless Plains / Flat Horizon” (2009). Each disc is rounded out with bonus tracks from the same period, including “Galleria Malaise,” “This Is Normal for Me (Decay Mix),” “Gruen Transfers,” and “Drosscape.” The set was mastered by Arthur Arsenne.
Tracklist:
01. Setting Yr Jetta on Fire
02. Amps into Instruments
03. Chladni (Extended Version)
04. Freehand Plateaus
05. Galleria Malaise
06. VisibleInvisible
07. elbisivnIelbisivV
08. VisibleInvisible (LIVE)
09. This is Normal for Me
10. Void (Wilt)
11. Plague Journal
12. Apocryphal Cities, Portents Fallen
13. Plague Journal (LIVE)
14. Gruen Transfers
15. Drosscape
16. Burying the Carnival
17. Exhuming the Carnival
18. Endless Plains
19. Flat Horizons
“A lot of the original files were hard to find,” says Foisy. “Some of these recordings only existed on a single CD-R, tape, or flash drive, so pulling them together felt more like preservation than compiling.”
The set is housed in a printed box designed by Terence Hannum, with a 16-page booklet built around a muted steel-blue palette and a barcode motif that erodes from disc to disc. The artwork features Brian Ulrich’s photographs of Dixie Square Mall, the abandoned shopping center outside Chicago. Writer Jonathan Rosenthal and André Foisy contribute essays on the period, alongside live photographs, flyers from the band’s early shows, and a complete discography of the 2005 to 2009 releases.
“Land of Ruins” arrives after Locrian ended a seven-year hiatus with New Catastrophism (2022) and End Terrain (2024), records that reached back toward the band’s early electronic work. This collection shows where that sound began. With the artwork by the great Brian Ulrich, Arsenic Solaris is happy to reveal the details on the upcoming release of ‘Land of Ruins’ coming out December 16. Pre-order from now on here.
—Locrian Biography —
Locrian is an Experimental project founded in Chicago in 2005 by André Foisy and Terence Hannum. The duo began collaborating in a deliberately piecemeal way, and their early discography grew into a sprawl of short runs, splits, and self-released editions, many of them limited to a few dozen copies. That restless period came into focus with “Drenched Lands” (2009) and “Territories” (2010), records that fused Drone, Noise, Black Metal, and Electronic Music into something unmistakably their own.
Locrian expanded to a trio with percussionist Steven Hess on “The Crystal World” (Utech Records, 2010). The trio went on to record “Return to Annihilation” (2013) and “Infinite Dissolution” (2015) for Relapse Records, along with collaborations with Christoph Heemann and Mamiffer. After a seven-year hiatus, Locrian returned with “New Catastrophism” (2022) and its companion EP “Ghost Frontiers,” followed by “End Terrain” (2024), which featured Erica Burgner-Hannum on vocals and Gordon Withers on cello. In 2026, “Arsenic Solaris” collects the band’s formative recordings on the five-CD box set “Land of Ruins.”