This is the rare album that reveals new depth within a catalog that already seemed so deep and ruminative while proclaiming rather unlimited possibilities for a band nearing the end of its first decade.
While Locrian’s molding of the rock idiom to the apocalyptic theme isn’t novel, their use is often more nuanced than their predecessor’s appropriations of the same ideas.
The strongest element the band took from its prog forebears for this compact, powerful record is just the sense of the album as a journey, one that feels complete.
Return to Annihilation has its darker tones, but it also has bright moments and sees the band developing variation in its songwriting.
‘Return to Annihilation’ is a visceral, liminal black hole. It’s unsettling and upsetting, the death of escapism in real time. It floods every corner, leaving you nowhere to flee the gloom of its dread. It’s the death of holidays, of love, of joy and of life- its cover art perfectly captures its depressed anxiety.
While its thick hopeless fog is deeply effectual, its ambience progressing a visceral tension far beyond its highly abstract scope, there is considerable ... read more
Lots of great ideas on this album. But there’s just way too much dead space to get to the actual good stuff on the album. It’s like a post post rock album
1 | Eternal Return 2:51 | |
2 | A Visitation From the Wrath of Heaven 8:24 | |
3 | Two Moons 4:26 | |
4 | Return to Annihilation 6:44 | |
5 | Exiting the Hall of Vapor and Light 5:14 | |
6 | Panorama of Mirrors 6:37 | |
7 | Obsolete Elegies 15:29 |
#15 | / | A.V. Club |