AArtist: Neurosis
Title: An Undying Love For A Burning World
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Neurot Recording
Neurosis. Back from nowhere without warning. It’s fair to say that this shocked me as much as when Godflesh dropped ‘A World Lit Only By Fire’, and the titles almost seem like companion pieces too. And even more both are bands that pivotted my musical life into hinterlands I had never explored, and in reality both created those hinterlands themselves.
But damn, Neurosis! I was a teeny bit late to their juggernaut as ‘Through Silver In Blood’ arrived and a review made me risk buying it and… well. Damn. That was it. Backwards to ‘Pain In Mind’, ‘Souls At Zero’ and ‘Enemy Of The Sun’ and forwards right up to this. Only caught them live once but, fuck, they did not disappoint. Almost two hours of refusing to leave the stage until instruments collapsed and the crowd was crushed.
And to top that, they return with Aaron bloody Turner to complete their ranks.
Does it get better?
Yeah it does because this album…
Torn, shouting vocals we are torn wide open…. the dissonance is deafening, the dissonance is deafening.Then ‘Mirror Deep’ with a riff as dense and as heavy as only Neurosis can be. It’s that hammer blow sound, beating down. The vocals perfect; howling anger, urgency, need to be heard, need to be understood. And then a moment of quiet as only Neurosis can do for me – every bit as intense as the noise. It leaves you bewildered, lost, and silently seeps into your soul as you lower your guard…BLAM! That riff style which somehow still after all these years retains some DNA of hardcore but the unsettling inexorable undertow of the dark melody half hidden within. I have no lyrics. I want those lyrics. I need those lyrics. This is not casual music, this is intent from drum to vocal to lyric. It shifts tempo like an earth crushing serpent. It smothers. It forces attention. It is, simply, Neurosis.
If I had concerns it would be a pale echo, they are shattered. This. Is. Neurosis. ‘First Red Rays’ could have come from ‘A Sun That Never Sets’. If pressed my favourite album. The vast gathering apocalyptic clouds of that album are here in this song. A blackened storm suddenly gaining momentum as it rolls over the horizon. It is bloody, horrifyingly brilliant. That riff that sounds like every muscle is strained pulling back on the instruments like an oarsman in a storm. The eye stalking quietly around you for a while before it engulfs you once more in the deluge. ‘Blind’ announces itself in strange low noises. Voices? Notes of trepidation as echoes like some siren, some alert calls and other things ripple past. A strange trip of a song as though in some small boat upon turbulent waters. The lead vocals here are just extraordinary; so much soul in these strained howls and calls. A midsection of quiet so crushing it hurts. Beauty in adversity, perhaps.
‘Seething And Scattered’ has bite, a sharp guitar tone to begin, battling vocals, an almost groove riff sliding down, down and out through a long, dense passage of by comparison quiet until a brutal slashing exit.
‘Untethered’ is a short, sharp hallway into the last half hour. Two tracks; ‘In The Waiting Hours’ an undulating, restless ten minutes almost calling out to the heavens for some kind of release or some end times or… perhaps ‘Last Light’. Pulsing beating electronics stuttering and buzzing. Almost spoken vocals. Or barked. Like the both the watchman warning and the demon in the dark. And the avalanche blows you away. It is so dark in sound. So relentless. Like.. some rough hewn beast, slouching towards….It sounds like a harbinger more than a song. The approach. There is no comfort in it. Not one moment in over sixteen minutes. Oh it shifts, it twists, it has moments that almost touch the prog world as ever but even these feel bleak. It feels like the sound of slowly losing something, something vital…We get voices unaccompanied by anything save strange noises, sounds. Descending the days on wavering light..Things ending. Sorrow we feel….Death. The inevitable last light. The drums beat, the ritual rising. Nature inevitable even as the world chokes on smoke. Who knows? The tune is tight and high behind the drum and the bass and the buzzing of the wires. And there is a frightening beauty to it all, bursting into full light as the tune rises up through the background clouds.
This is not simply a spectacular, dark, intense rebirth of one of the most essential of bands, it seems absolutely formed from hard muscle, thick veins of emotion and complete and utter determination and resolve: we need to be here, we need to do this, and this…. This is what we are.
And Neurosis have spoken with a voice that shatters bone.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 