Neurosis

A pitch-black monolith of colossal proportions, the fifth album by Neurosis cements a decade of evolution and bold reinventions, firmly fixing the name of the Californian sextet on the map and presenting them in their most sumptuous, suffocating, profound form. For a project born out of entirely different premises, arriving at such an imposing synthesis is probably the most coveted achievement of all: if a record manages to become the starting point for entire genres and subgenres, its place in the annals is guaranteed. Its story reveals a creative power that has still not been fully deciphered.

The songs stretch out, the fury eases, the instrumental framework grows more refined, elaborating a decidedly different vision of what only two years earlier had been essential, incendiary punk. It's the first of a dizzying series of transformations, one that alienates early fans but draws in new listeners, attracted by a language that's no longer docile, but certainly more restless, dark, and refined in its own way. It's the launchpad for Neurosis's sound to take an even more heterodox turn, kicking off a phase of intensely acute experimentation.

Drawing directly from the Melvins' earliest, most deranged records, "Gluey Porch Treatments" and "Ozma", Neurosis — now bolstered by the addition of Simon McIlroy on keyboards and sampler, and Adam Kendall (visual artist and drummer) — would write the first important pages of their career, translating the codes of the newly-formed sludge language into a complex prism of directions and crossovers. First "Souls At Zero" (which marked the move to Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles), and the following year "Enemy Of The Sun", made clear the band's breakneck evolution, as within the space of five years they had managed to draw on their own rich influences and carve out a divergent, curious approach. 

Neurosis's sludge can be sticky and suffocating, capable of stretching out and departing from song-form structures at will, but by now it possesses a refinement of touch and clarity of gesture that also come through in its own conceptual elaborations and obscure thematic frameworks, aided by a rich visual component as well. This is by now a band fully aware of its own means, capable of releasing a one-two punch of towering proportions within the span of just two years, handling concepts like repetition and progression with the ease of a seasoned outfit.

Everything, in short, would suggest a band that has "arrived", one that has found its own equilibrium and a consolidated style, perhaps still to be explored in all its dimensions. And yet this is merely the preamble: three years later, nothing will be the same.

Conceived as a single unbroken block, an experience to be absorbed without interruption, from the very first listen the album reveals itself as a journey through the heart of the apocalypse, heavy as a funeral procession and imposing as a monolith, in which inner darkness blurs with outer darkness. In a landscape dominated by death metal's more melodic fringes, the narcotic language of stoner rock and the iconoclastic rage of the second wave of black metal, the progressive assault mounted by Neurosis shatters every paradigm. The rest of the world will struggle for quite some time to absorb this lesson.

Even offering a different interpretation of the album's lyrical design, it's impossible not to notice its deeply allegorical qualities, in a play of abstractions and connections that the music, even before the words themselves, makes entirely its own: within its constant, overwhelming shifts in tone and phrasing, in its moments of release and its overpowering surges of pain, amid the samples and the explosive instrumental codas, lies the secret of an ancient story — but one still worthy of note.

Ultimately, "atmosphere" is the key word behind this mutation: not that previous records lacked it, but within the folds of "Through Silver In Blood" it is precisely this element that binds everything together, like a string of jet-black pearls, uniting each of the album's (often very lengthy) tracks, marking their reprises, ostinatos and tonal shifts with the precision of a Swiss watch. The sonic material of Neurosis's music has, in short, become more evocative and suggestive than ever, spacing out and dosing every element with a care that the masters of soft/loud dynamics would soon after turn into a paradigm. The role of dynamics becomes even more central, marking the oppressive, unsettling charge of the performances with a skillful alternation of coloring and stylistic diversions, in the manner of a colossal progressive suite.

You can almost picture them, the two alchemical serpents on the cover (a true distillation of Nineties-metal iconography) as they pierce the skin, releasing all the blood and pain that had been held still for far too long. The scenery shifts, and now it's distant Sabbath-like echoes that inspire the band's modus operandi, as beneath the drums' most frantic phrasing they uncover desolate doom passages, unbearable as a funeral march. The vocals, still mindful of their punk roots, thicken, expressing themselves through short, incisive metaphors ("Windstorm promised/ The teeth strained/ Eyes see glory/ Rings end in slow/ Death wash out/ Your wound rings/ End in slow death"), never fully resolving their arcane mystery.

Distorted keyboards and guitar dissonances hit with increasing force as the track progresses, ratcheting up the sense of alienation with unerring mastery. And just as the riffs seem like they could grind on forever, crushing every form of hope with ease, as the track closes, rhythm and color rediscover the hardcore agitation of the band's early days, intersecting with the ancestral cut of the drum skins to resolve the long overture in an accelerating burst of violence.

While "Aeon" resolves the dilemma more quickly, leaving little room for the elegant neoclassical references of its opening, it nonetheless knows how to play with the elements at its disposal, framing an anguished segment for solo bass and keyboards (as sharp as arctic winds) within two major sludge sections, conceived like a threat building with ever-greater force. It's easy to spot, in the melancholy closing passage of viola and violin, the unveiling of a catharsis seized only with tremendous effort.

While "Through Silver In Blood" fits this definition only marginally (though the debate on this point remains open), its grandiose sense of atmosphere, its progressive and incremental song construction, and the spaciousness of its arrangements would nonetheless be taken as a reference point by bands that were themselves hugely influential, such as Isis, Mastodon and Cult Of Luna, who would open up the new millennium in the name of a decidedly more expansive (sometimes excessively so) and evocative way of interpreting metal. In its harrowing atmospheres, Neurosis's creative peak pointed the way forward.