Monday 14 November 2016

Neurosis - Fires Within Fires (Album Review)


Release date: September 23rd 2016. Label: Neurot Recordings. Format: CD/DD/Vinyl

Fires Within Fires – Tracklisting

1.Bending Light 07:47
2.A Shadow Memory 06:50
3.Fire Is The End Lesson 06:54
4.Broken Ground 08:44
5.Reach 10:36

Band Members:

Scott Kelly - Guitars & Vocals
Steve Von Till - Guitars, Vocals, Filters & Textures
Dave Edwardson - Bass, Moog Synthesizer & Space
Noah Landis - Organ, Piano, Samples & Atmospheres
Jason Roeder - Drums

Review:

The hippie movement, so regulated by boredom, has been gone for awhile and the governed monolith that stands in its place is called Neurosis. This band is a force that will obviously never rest.

An interesting observation is that these guys don't entertain to grand fashion on the exhibitionist street corner of popular music, but rather they need to be searched out in dark alleys as they orchestrate pain into music. Neurosis are no longer young radicals making noise pollution, they are now seasoned elders who celebrate in noise therapy.

They have amassed a large body of musical documentation during their career; where every album is uniquely different with regard to experimentation, but universally the same with the gravitational constant being the sheer spectrum of this band. They are essentially the salt of the melodious earth and the ultimate peppering for a curmudgeon palate philosophy.

These night watchmen understand the motive of sonically sharing a state of mind through an album and they equally understand the alibi which is each subsequent album of a yet another different shared experience.

Neurosis albums are worth something because they evoke living through natural causes. This band owns the doomsday jukebox, an incessantly whirring cerebral machinery, spinning a matrix of sound which makes it more comfortable living in purgatory.

On this album I detect a blending of all the previous Neurosis eras, as well as, the distinct sound of forging ahead, all of which is contemplated with the perfect brevity. No one can truly umpire Neurosis' musical output, because Neurosis are the arbiters of sound. A well established group whose brand is a symbol of trust.

"Fires Within Fires" is yet another meaningful face on their sonic totem pole. To the songs my "fiends"...

Bending Light- a great album starter with bombastic chords that segway into delicate subtleness, only to be viciously broken by telltale vocals broadcasted as the croak of old door hinges.

A Shadow Memory-the sounds of descending distortion coupled with lion heart drums, producing the electricity to power feed your energy starved sound circuits into fizzle fried traces.

Fire Is The End Lesson- a whirlwind of trade off vocalizations amidst soaring horsepower heaviness. The band are cave crickets rubbing their instruments together to unleash night reverberations with purpose to jumble the letters of a psycho-analyst's crossword puzzle.

Broken Ground-this is a sonic contemplation, a molten to hardened substance forged by the blacksmiths of a different metal genre. The distinct vocals spew forth from rusty pipes. This has all the mineshaft weight and artillery atmosphere of triumphantly tunnelling through rock, only to be trapped by the strangeness of the glowing debris.

Reach- A song that creates a surrealistic surround sound which dive bombs in slow motion between gluttonous obesity and a library whisper. The background noise reminds me of the time a common housefly got stuck on my turntable stylus. You will be reminded that the disease is sometimes the cure, so taste the silver as you haemorrhage from within and bleed from your mind's eye, as if synapses are broken shot glasses against the metal piano wire of your nervous system. A titan force. A true album closer of cranking amps and already another classic Neurosis song.

You can wrap a dead fish in this review and throw it out with the weekly garbage, because Neurosis never disappoint. They don't need a promotion, for they exist solely on momentum...mass and velocity, magnitude and direction. They mutate and experiment, but the core remains the same, nothing can go wrong when music is this important.

Neurosis are the Chessmen in a world of checkers.

Words by Nick Palmisano

Thanks to Jack at Rarely Unable PR for the promo. Fires Within Fires is available to buy on CD/DD/Vinyl now from Neurot Recordings