It is often said that variety is the spice of life, and experimentation is often the means by which artists allow that variety to manifest itself. Scott Kelly is no stranger to experimentation, as Mirrors For Psychic Warfare is just one of many side projects that have burst out from the implosion of creativity that underpins Neurosis over the past few years. Two years on from the debut self-titled release that soared at times and lurched at others, I See What I Became (Neurot) is another step down the unnerving, anxiety-ridden path its predecessor alluded to but never fully realized.Continue reading
Tag Archives: Neurot
CHRCH – Light Will Consume Us All
There are albums that aspire to create atmosphere and dynamics. And then there is CHRCH’s Light Will Consume Us All (Neurot). It’s the type of recording that oozes sinister and gloom from its opening notes. When its guitars click into gear it’s the sound of creatures cloaked by the cover of night. Continue reading
The Body And Full Of Hell – Ascending A Mountain Of Heavy Light
The Body and Full Of Hell are no strangers to collaborations or to each other, as both acts have teamed up in the past together and individually with some of the undergrounds best bands (Thou, Code Orange, Krieg etc). One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache (Neurot) was an assault on the senses, and you’d expect nothing less from both bands, but with Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light (Thrill Seeker) they look to push the boundaries of what qualifies as music even further.Continue reading
Ufomammut – 8
While many bands and artists spend their careers within boundaries of a genre, some others like to tread between boundaries and make their own mark. Italian psychedelic doom group, Ufomammut have and continue to do so with their latest album, 8 (Neurot). Forty-five minutes of mind-melting fuzzy bass and guitar riffs over spacey synth is sure to warp your brain. Also to note, the marketing of naming this album 8 while there are exactly eight tracks on the album is simple, yet gratifying.Continue reading
Amenra Release Haunting Video For Children Of The Eye
Cult favorite Amenra have released their brand new music video for the track ‘Children Of The Eye’. The song comes off of their forthcoming new album Mass VI via Neurot Recordings next month. Watch the clip below.Continue reading
Guest Post: José Carlos Santos Top Ten Albums Of 2015
As we dash towards the holidays and the end of the year Ghost Cult is feeling good about this season of giving. So we are giving our fans a chance to get to know our partners, peers, and friends from bands in the world of music. They will chime in with some guest blogs, end of year lists, and whatever else is on their minds as we pull the plug on 2015. Today we have José Carlos Santos, who writes a lot about music, being Senior Writer for both Terrorizer and Rock-a-Rolla UK, Chief of staff for LOUD! from Portugal, shared with us his favorite 10 albums of 2015.
1. Solefald – World Metal. Kosmopolis Sud (Indie Recordings)
Pushing the envelope isn’t the half of it. The first song on this truly revolutionary record is called ‘World Music With Black Edges’, and that’s exactly what it is. It should be just about all the guideline you’ll need before embarking on this journey. Black metal, electronics, Frank Zappa and African sounds, among many, many other things, are thrown into a free-flowing, astoundingly cohesive whole. In an age where having two songs that don’t sound like each other is already considered “genre-hopping”, Solefald are one of the few bands worthy of the term avant-garde.
2. Royal Thunder – Crooked Doors (Relapse)
The best pure, true rock album in years, Crooked Doors sees Royal Thunder fulfill the potential they have always shown, and move up to the pantheon of the greats. It feels and sounds timeless – if you hand it to someone and say that it’s a lost 1978 classic, it’ll make the same sense as if you’ll tell them it’s 2024’s album of the year you just brought back from the future in your time machine. A great song is a great song, and they’re all great here.
3. My Dying Bride – Feel The Misery (Peaceville)
My Dying Bride are back to the masterpieces – 14 years after their last truly great record, The Dreadful Hours, Feel The Misery recaptures the tragic sorrow and the decadent grandeur we’ve always loved from them.
4. Revenge – Behold.Total.Rejection (Season Of Mist)
Because fuck you.
5. Dødheimsgard – A Umbra Omega (Peaceville)
The other band alongside Solefald that warrants the proper use of the avant-garde tag, Dødheimsgard have given us a mysterious, shape shifting record, full of dark nuances and details that we’ll still be discovering come the time for the 2016 lists. The best thing Vicotnik’s done since ‘Written In Waters’ – and yes, I’m including ‘666 International’ in that appraisal.
6. Tau Cross – Tau Cross (Relapse)
Amebix are no more, long live Tau Cross. Not only is this the logical successor to the astounding ‘Sonic Mass’, it’s also enriched by the extra talents of Voivod’s Michel “Away” Langevin and crusty guitarists Jon Misery and Andy Lefton, all of them lead to greatness by the might of Rob Miller, who is still one of the most unique songwriters in extreme music.
7. Sigh – Graveward (Candlelight)
Sometimes you’ll have to pause halfway through ‘Graveward’ and wonder how is this possible – roughly five million tracks are all going in a different direction, all at once, and yet everything makes perfect sense, there is order and flow in the middle of the craziness and chaos. Alongside Solefald and Dødheimsgard, you’ve got enough insanity this year to wreck your brain for years to come.
8. Therapy? – Disquiet (Amazing Record Company)
Most of you might only know Therapy?’s most popular phase, but the true essence of the band has been in their last four or five fiery, adventurous and energetic records. ‘Disquiet’ is the best of them all, a mix between instant punk-ish gratification and deep, deceptively simple songwriting that’ll allow for multiple repeat plays without a hint of exhaustion. Also, closer ‘Deathstimate’ is a serious contender for song of the year, or decade, or whatever.
9. Goatsnake – Black Age Blues (Southern Lord)
It’s been a 15 year wait, but for each year of absence there’s a kickass bluesy riff that’ll stay in your head forever. Goatsnake just picked up where they left off, literally – the first song is called ‘Another River To Cross’, a nod to ‘Flower Of Disease’s closer ‘The River’.
10. Steve Von Till – A Life Unto Itself (Neurot)
Rarely has such a subtle and generally quiet record packed such a thunderous emotional punch – the Neurosis guitarist/vocalist might present himself in the sparser, most minimalist fashion, just one man lost in the woods with an acoustic guitar, some effects and his coarse, haunting voice, but these songs will reach down into your heart and squeeze it with the force of a thousand men.
Dark Buddha Rising – Inversum
Inversum (Neurot) is a spectre; a whispering guide to internal torment. It prepares the scenario, distracts and occupies you before leaving you to the horrors of your own mind. Where this journey goes is of your own making, the suggestion and probing of the menacing soundtrack is merely the catalyst.
Dark Buddha Rising‘s fifth album, and the opening of their “Third Cycle”, consists of two sprawling twenty plus minute tracks, ‘E S O’ and ‘E X O’, that serve as an opportunity for mental exploration; the two extended fields facilitating a voyage of the mind. The images, and the level of meditation, allowed into the opportunity their soundscape provides will be specific to each listener, but this dark, ominous procession of building tension brings with it the prospect to submerge into their world.
Each track offers a similar pattern, which dynamically allows this to work as a cyclical journey, endlessly concluding in nightmarish cacophony. The initiation is gradual, the build-up menacing, as minutes of cloud gather in the mind, feedback subliminal and ever present, swelling and pitching, before doomy guitars hew a crossroads into the path, and slow, heavy riffs serve as an amphidromic point, an epicentre for the trance of repetition. Haunted, withdrawn vocals filter in and out, sometimes terrified, sometimes terrifying, at other moments softer, more enticing, before the intensity shifts. The tension pulls tighter and, from being in control of the vision, the host starts to loosen our restraints, juddering us from one unreality of our own making to an ordeal shaped by the blackened minds of others, as tortured denouements flail and rasp at the edges of our consciousness. Yet there is no slaying of the demon, bloodlust is left unsated, satisfaction rent from us, due to a sudden curtailing of proceedings, as the cycle begins its brooding again, sans a feeling of closure.
Dark Buddha Rising promote and celebrate the “Black Arts of Psychedelia”, but even those of us unaltered of state can achieve absorption in their ritualistic art. At times brooding, always oppressive, the encapsulating journey of Inversum requires immersion. Take its hand, and it will lead you to unsettling plains.
7.5/10
STEVE TOVEY
The Mystical And Emotional Part II- Steve Von Till
In part two of Ross Baker’s chat with Steve Von Till, Steve discusses the impact he is trying to have shaping young minds, an update of a recent illness that struck the Neurosis family, and the status of the new, long-awaited album from his much respected and beloved band.
It should come as no surprise that Von Till is a teacher by trade considering his love of researching musical history. “I find myself inspired a lot by things children say. They have such inquisitive minds. It gives me hope for the future of the planet. You turn on the television and everything is so negative. It is like; “Good morning, the world is fucked!” you hear a lot about Terrorism and war and how corrupt the world is all the time. It’s important to remember that we have a choice. We can make a better world for our families.”
Speaking to Steve, you get a picture of the nature loving family man, a far cry from the rugged brute stalking the stage during Neurosis shows. While Steve may live in another state away from bandmate Scott Kelly, who resides over in Oregon, but when Scott’s wife Sarah, fell prey to a mysterious affliction which left her temporarily unable to walk or see Von Till rallied to his friend’s aid. “She has improved a lot thankfully. It’s been really hard for (The Kelly family) but we have all been there for them as much as we can. I saw Scott a couple of weeks ago and luckily she is getting the care that she needs. Scott is a warrior. He’s a great father and has not had the easiest life. I remember when I did my first solo shows. I was fucking terrified! I talked to Scott about it as he has done way more solo shows. He still gets nervous and shaky too. There is no volume to hide behind when it’s just you out there. I hope to do more solo shows this year. I am playing in London at the end of June and my wife is German so we want to do a few dates over there.”
That brings us to the subject of Neurosis itself. “We have the skeleton of the next record. Jason and Scott came down in February and we improvised some ideas. Steve Albini will be involved again. It’s our thirtieth anniversary so it’s important to make a great record. Making Neurosis music is instinctive. We are like a conduit for this beast.”
ROSS BAKER
The Mystical And Emotional – Steve Von Till
If you were to think of a single word to sum up the attitude of Steve Von Till, that word would be dedicated. The sun has yet to rise in his hometown of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and at 5am he is already on the telephone to Ghost Cult, for this interview before he has to wake his children up, take them to school and drive the eleven miles to the Elementary school where he works.
It is this dedication, which has seen him forge an uncompromising trail in music via the bombastic and awe-inspiring Neurosis, the rural psychedelia of Harvestman and his solo work, steeped in the rich traditions of Celtic music and American folk. Considering Von Till’s hectic schedule, it is unsurprising that there has been little time to record the follow-up to 2008’s A Grave Is A Grim Horse platter.
“Making music with Neurosis is not a cerebral event. It is us surrendering ourselves to this beast that drives us. The solo material is my strange way of trying to honour those artists that inspired me. It has to have a depth of expression I require from music otherwise it is pointless. It is a challenge to craft something quiet and concise.” Indeed in the last seven years, Steve has been all but idle with Neurosis touring more frequently than they have for some time, running the band’s label Neurot and of course having time for family life it’s easy to see why new offering A Life Unto Itself (Neurot) took such a time to appear. “I am so bad with time. It doesn’t feel linear to me!” Von Till chuckles. “I wanted to continue to use the traditional Americana aspects like fiddle and pedal steel that informs my work, but also to use some of the textures I have crafted with Harvestman. Some of the techniques where the guitar sounds like a synthesizer. Other than ‘Chasing Ghosts’ which was written on piano and ‘Night Of The Moon’ which I wrote on electric guitar, the focus remained acoustic guitar and vocals. It’s the sound of me picking up a guitar when everyone has gone to bed and just seeing what comes out!”
It’s not hard to imagine Steve sat alone, guitar in hand coaxing out riffs before taking these skeletal structures to be fleshed out in the recording studio. Clearly a labour of love, created with absolute autonomy, Steve talked about what it was like to seek outside help in the shape of dedicated engineer Randall Dunn. “We’d met each other a few times. I have a studio at home so I could do it myself, but I don’t enjoy engineering. I don’t want to be responsible for capturing a good vocal take. Randall has a much wider variety of acts he has worked with. Of course he has worked with Earth and Sunn0))) but does a lot of stuff outside of our scene. We had some great conversations and his studio is excellent. It has a lot of vibe with a big vintage console. It was great having someone to bounce ideas off and get feedback from. We did recorded everything in just two days then we got the additional musicians in and did the overdubs. He brought in Eyvind Kang, who is an amazing viola player and composer. He asked me for some key words and ideas of what I heard. I gave him a few comments of what I heard, like references to the environments places and energies, very abstract stuff, but he took that and added so much. Sometimes the Viola parts sound like animals or take a Celtic feel. He had such a great intuitive nature. This album is a collage that occupies several different stories and emotional territory. J. Kardong our pedal steel brought a lot too. Not just a typical Americana feel. They read my mind, when I drove the six-hour drive home back to Idaho they really hit me. I realised this record was a brooding retrospective on my entire life. It’s traversing the mystical, emotion and mundane all mixed together.”
A Life Unto Itself may be a slight departure sonically from his earlier solo work, the lyrical content once again references nature as a metaphor with words like ‘Blood’ ‘Earth’ and ‘Moon’ all reoccurring. Greatly inspired by his rural surroundings, Von Till recalls what made him pack up his family and wave his home of San Francisco, California goodbye. “It’s like living in a beehive! Everyone is so busy and working on their next project. After my first daughter was born I could only see the filth around me. Needles in the street and condoms in the gutter. I knew I needed out when I was stepping past homeless people every day carrying a baby and four bags of groceries! If I didn’t give myself some space I was just going to hate everything. It has always been part of my personality that needs to be connected to nature. Humanity has lost that connection. If you live in a city you have to make a huge effort to connect with it. Now I live out here I have to make the effort to get to a city to go to a museum or buy some records but how often do you do those things? Pretty rarely. My drive to work is eleven miles down a country road and when I get home I am surrounded by twelve acres of forest. We have weather too here whereas San Fran is always so hot. Here you have to get your firewood and plan for the winter. I feel more connected to nature out here when I am a part of it.”
Listening to ‘A Life Unto Itself’ you find yourself transported to rural landscapes via the influences ranging from Celtic music to Steve’s take on traditional Americana. Neurosis love of a diverse cross-section of artists from Joy Division to Amebix to Pink Floyd is well documented, but as Steve tells us, these genres held his attention from an early age also. “My dad listened to John Denver and some of the more pop orientated folk music. It hit me who one guy with a guitar could be so powerful. I loved putting speakers by my head and listening to it. Growing up a metalhead and getting into punk you’d have thought that folk music would be the last thing for me when I was 15 years old and pissed off but I went back to it later via psychedelic. I love Tibetan monks and throat singing. Anything from another culture. I am obsessed with European folk traditions, they are where bluegrass and country come from! I loved going on that voyage of discovery. It all comes in circles the way people find these sounds and make them their own. I love the way people like Townes Van Zant and Gillian Welch have distilled these old traditions into new forms.”
ROSS BAKER
Ufomammut – Ecate
The serious ripples caused by 2010’s Eve (Supernatural Cat) led many to their first experience of arcane Italian trio Ufomammut, yet this was in fact the band’s sixth full-length; an at that point eleven-year career of garnering underground plaudits suddenly threatening to blow over into major interest. The seismic shift created by the ensuing double-volume product Oro, their first for Neurosis‘ label Neurot Recordings, propelled the mind-expanding titans into a different galaxy, and as a result there are rabid stirrings in anticipation of ninth album Ecate (also Neurot).
From the outset, sci-fi style bleeps and effects pepper the ears but the rumbling buzz is present, lying in wait: first leading in Vita‘s gradually surging drums, monolithic in their weight and cavernous in scope; then, Urlo‘s squalling, utterly terrifying bass growls. As that humming electricity transfers itself into the bulldozing, heavy Stoner riff of opener ‘Somnium’ the listener is transported to a place halfway between hell and outer space. The oppressive, mounting coda houses hollers straight from the Conan handbook, closing a track exuding all the band’s characteristics: that ability to subtly set the scene; the ascension to stoner-blues rambles of the kind offered up by Karma to Burn, yet rendering the power of that outfit toothless; the psychedelic warbles raining upon evil, Doom-laden atmospheres; and the spitting terror of Urlo’s diseased vocal, steeped in the infected sludge of the filthiest morass. The macerating power of the following, city-flattening ‘Plouton’ is a wondrous, fearful experience, whilst coy yet sinister squeaks and ominous rumblings open the subsequently pulsing, shamanic anger of ‘Chaosecret’.
It’s this latter morphing of energy, an innate inventiveness which leaves the listener at a loss of what to expect next without sacrificing the element of power, that marks out Ufomammut from so many of their ilk. In the case of ‘Chaosecret’ that manifests itself in a perfect sense of occasion and timing, slowly yet suddenly enabling the track to build and swell into a hulking, crushing monstrosity, so organically it goes almost unnoticed. At its terrible height, such is the coruscating power the band emit that you can feel the pain of the cabs, protesting under the weight of the throbbing, impossibly heavy yet latent groove of ‘Temple’; switching from a laid-back vocal to an all-out Stoner-Sludge attack, the sound at times numbing the senses with its all-consuming omnipotence. Even the delicate, cosmic ‘Revelation’, the second of two sub-five minute tracks defying the band’s usual epic format, is pounded by oscillating bullets of electronica in complex swathes of beauty and ferocity.
Alongside the gradually increasing influence of atmosphere and keys, the pulverising hammer blows covering the second half of closer ‘Daemons’ thankfully prevent its monotonous early sections from negatively affecting an otherwise stupendous display of might; and, in turn, lay the path for a fragile, pensive and utterly fitting coda. Whilst not eclipsing the Oro opi, Ecate gives them a bloody good run for their money and reinforces Ufomammut’s burgeoning reputation as flag-bearers for pulsating, inventive, low-end noise.
8.0/10
PAUL QUINN