Posts Tagged ‘Neurosis’

Bug Facer – Horsefly

Posted: 10 November 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Warren Records – 25th November 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

While Leeds has a strong reputation and record for emerging noise-orientated rock bands, Hull is proving that it’s not far behind as a spawning ground for purveyors of noise-driven angst and anger.

As was the case in the 70s and 80s, social deprivation proves to be a powerful driver for the creation of art that channels frustration and the whole gamut of expression that comes from dark places, and from adversity. Of course, it’s always the North. Leeds spawned goth, Manchester Joy Division, Magazine, Slaughter and the Dogs, The Durutti Column. Sheffield, too, has a strong heritage of bands known for innovation born out of frustration, with Cabaret Voltaire being a strong starter for 10. Hull, of course, brought us Throbbing Gristle, arguably one of the most groundbreaking acts of the 70s and beyond.

Most punk bands, especially the Pistols, simply cranked out pub rock with a sneer and the guitars turned up. Throbbing Gristle went beyond any conventions of music to create a real soundtrack to alienation.

More recently, we’ve had The Holy Orders, Cannibal Animal, Low Hummer, Parasitic Twins, and many more. And now we have Bug Facer kicking out a disaffected din, and ‘Horsefly’ is one hell of a debut single, and clocking in at over six and a half minutes it’s a behemoth of a track.

The band say of ‘Horsefly’, ‘At its core the track is about struggle. It conjures images of being trapped or stuck in a box or something but we don’t want to give away too much! We try to write music that is evocative and suggestive, not being too direct with our lyrics and ideas as we’d much prefer our listeners to tell us what it is they hear and see as they listen to our tracks. Some people have said it’s like battling through and emerging from a storm, others say it’s like someone has angered the gods.’

The sense of struggle is conveyed keenly here: you feel the pain in your bones, in your muscles, nerves, and sinews. It pulls hard at the soul, at the same time as punching away at the guts with a methodical thud.

It’s a hefty, dirgy trudge that oozes anguish, and if the organic feel is rathe in the vein of Neurosis, the bands it’s closest to are Unsane and Kowloon Walled City. It’s bleak, grinding, stark and brutal. Its power derives not from distortion, or from pace, but from sheer density and crushing volume, and from raw power. It’s the kind of claustrophobic, pulverising heaviness that leaves you aching. This is serious. And Bug Facer are instantly my new favourite band.

Tension Span – The Future Died Yesterday

Posted: 28 September 2022 in Albums
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Neurot Recordings – 30th September 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Tension Span’s debut is quite a departure from the majority of Neurot releases and Neurosis offshoots, of which there are now many. Comprising Noah Landis (Neurosis, Christ On Parade), Geoff Evans (Asunder), and Matt Parrillo (Dystopia, Kicker), the blurb hails the arrival of an album that uses ‘the musical language of their past, the dark punk of their early bands… that infuses classic elements of punk and post-punk, and sounds both urgent and personal, speaking truth to the bleak realities of today’s socio-political collapse, and the angst and identity crisis it brings’.

And The Future Died Yesterday delivers on that, in spades. It’s spiky, jagged, angular, the guitars brittle yet driving and everything is driven by an agitated, twitchy bass that hits on every bear of the relentless four-square rhythms. It’s pitched as for being for fans of Killing Joke, New Model Army, Conflict, and Rudimentary Peni, among others, and there’s a keen sense that Tension Span are drawing on elements of classic anarchist, anti-authoritarian, anti—capitalist punk and post-punk as a means of channelling their ire. It’s the spirit of the early eighties, condensed into an adrenaline-fuelled package that makes perfect sense in 2022. What goes around comes around, but this time around it’s harder and more dysfunctional and powered by the Internet.

It’s harder because it’s difficult to differentiate fact from fiction, and because no-one has any time anymore. Everything is pressure, and everything is relentless. Everyone seems to spend every hour chasing their tails, chasing pay, or otherwise struggling to keep up with life. Even leisure time is competitive as people battle to keep abreast of the latest Netflix binges and post their viewing on social media, from simple posts on what they’re watching to full-blown critiques… and seriously, fuck the fucking lot of it and get a grip! As a society, we really don’t help ourselves.

Not so long ago, the press was all over employees regaining control of their work / life balance, embracing hybrid working that involved more time at home and less in the office, and there are endless column inches devoted to ‘the great resignation’ and ‘quiet quitting’ (aka doing the job you’re paid for instead of doing your manager’s job for your own pay) or whatever. It’s all bullshit, and it’s all manipulation from the controllers of capital, designed to keep workers in check and maximise productivity. But who benefits from productivity? Not the productive worker.

The trouble is, so many are simply too preoccupied or busy to notice, let alone complain. ‘Climbing up the ladder when they’re on a fucking treadmill,’ a line from ‘Crate Song’ (a snarling blast that combines the vintage punk of The Sex Pistols with the snarling contemporary nihilism of Uniform sums it all up perfectly. Society says that careers are imperative; the government certainly does. But why? And why does the majority blindly accept this? Because they need the money – and the enhanced benefits of a career climbing the corporate ladder – to keep up.

Tension Span articulate the fury at this false societal construct which exists primarily as a tool oof oppression. The title brings home the bleakness of view: there is no future now. We’re doomed, fucked. This was the mood that permeated the late 70s and early 80s.

The shadow of early PiL looms large over The Future Died Yesterday, and is nowhere more apparent on the bass-led bleakness of the six-minute ‘Filaments’ with its motoric Krautrock vibe, where The Cure and Killing Joke collide in an ocean of reverb. ‘Trepidation’ is built around a thudding flange-coated bass that’s pure Cure, but the vocal is more metal, and this is heavy, oppressive stuff.

Instead of breathing life, ‘Ventilator’ is a furious assault that requires no explanation in the context of the last couple of years, and the second half of the album picks up the pace to deliver a succession of sonic assaults on the shitshow that is America. But it’s not just America: this is the world right now, and it’s fucked, as ‘Human Scrapyard’ attests most succinctly: ‘Out with the old, in with the new…’

The Future Died Yesterday is a dark album – but these are dark times, making this a perfect soundtrack.

Listen: ‘Carcini’ by Grave Lines

Posted: 9 May 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Two albums in and London’s Grave Lines, purveyors of ‘heavy gloom’ have already carved a unique niche in the myriad spheres of heavy music. Their first album Welcome To Nothing set the tone for their distinct take on doom metal, which was broadened even further with album two Fed Into The Nihilist Engine. An epic feast of hard ‘n’ heavy riffs coupled with brooding sadness interspersed with thoughtful transcendent moments of introspection.

Never a band to rely solely on trotting out those ‘doom metal’ tropes, the band began to weave in gothic and experimental elements into their music, to delve deeper into the dark shadows of the psyche.

Now with their third album Communion Grave Lines continue their exploration into the ugliness of the human condition, at the same time becoming a band that truly defies any pigeonhole.

Continuing to hone and evolve their collective vision and aided by the masterful production of Andy Hawkins at The Nave Studios, Communion sees Grave Lines creep further into the various corners of their sound.

In a nutshell Communion is a violent descent of bile-soaked intensity spiralling between filth laden swagger, and fragile mournful lament. The album delves into the internal aloneness of existence and the failings of the human connection.

Owing as much to Bauhaus and Killing Joke as it does to Black Sabbath or Neurosis, there are moments of gut wrenching doomed up heaviness and bellowing noise rock, contrasting with ambient gothic passages and a thoughtful melancholy, to a create a powerful new chapter in their ceaseless journey through the gloom. Listen to first single ‘Carcini’ now:

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Watch: ‘Called From the Wind’ by Steve Von Till

Posted: 27 March 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Steve Von Till shares another piece from his forthcoming ambient album A Deep Voiceless Wilderness approaching on 30th April via Neurot Recordings. "Called From The Wind" arrives by way of an elegant video from Chariot Of Black Moth, which can be viewed below. The track is also available on all the main streaming sites. About the video Steve comments, "Jakub Moth hints at the emotion behind a timeless story about humanity and landscape without saying too much, without limiting the universal scope of the sound. As I have removed the verbal language from the ambient version, he has added visual poetry to accompany it."

Watch the video here:

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Steve Von Till – No Wilderness Deep Enough

Posted: 15 July 2020 in Albums
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Neurot Recordings – 7th August 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

Stepping out from the Neurosis fold once more to deliver a fifth solo album since the turn of the millennium, Steve Von Till brings more grizzles bleakness across six lengthy songs. These are still very much songs in the conventional sense, structured, organised, focused, centred around melody and instrument and voice. And as the title suggests, No Wilderness Deep Enough finds Von Till wandering some dark, barren territories.

As is a defining feature of the Neurosis sound, there’s a richly organic feel to the music here. Brooding strings provide the core for the sparse but dark orchestral arrangements which dominate this bleak, acoustic-led album that places Von Till’s grizzled, growling vocals to the fore.

A sparse piano motif – which is almost a direct replication of Glissando’s ‘Floods’ plays out the outro on ‘Dreams of Trees’, the album’s first song, which is a low-key, percussion-free post-rock effort that tugs at emotional levels that have lain dormant for an eternity – or at least since we’ve all been clenched in the spasm of lockdown. It taps into a different and deeper psychological space.

It’s all remarkably low-key, so does actually require some attention to fully absorb, but some quiet time and contemplation soundtracked by No Wilderness Deep Enough makes for a quite moving experience.

Oddly, much of No Wilderness Deep Enough sounds more like I Like Trains fronted by Mark Lanegan, and the dark introspection of single release ‘Indifferent Eyes’ carries the same brooding, mood, and a sense of a cracked emotional state – ground down, world-weary, harrowed, and bereft, embattled, bloodied, but still standing. Von Till conveys all of this with a heavy-timbred creaking sigh, a ravaged, Leonard Cohen growl delivered with magnificent poise. You feel this: every note, every word.

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Watch: ‘Indifferent Eyes’ by Steve Von Till

Posted: 12 July 2020 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Steve Von Till reveals his new single and video ‘Indifferent Eyes’ from his forthcoming album, No Wilderness Deep Enough. The record’s six pieces of music shape a hallucinatory landscape of sound that plumbs the depths of the natural world’s mysteries and uncertainties—questions that have vexed humanity since the dawn of time asked anew amidst a backdrop that’s as haunting as it is holistic.

About the track and video Steve remarks "Indifferent Eyes is perhaps the best example of how the process of creating No Wilderness Deep Enough pulled something very different out of me vocally;  something more expressive, more out on a limb and adventurous, and definitely outside my previous comfort zone. I am grateful at this stage in my artistic life to still have opportunities to challenge myself and grow. This past winter, photographer / videographer Bobby Cochran travelled up to our property in North Idaho to shoot this video.  I love any excuse to get outside and stay outside in the winter time.  We hiked, built fires, and shared many hours of great conversation about what is important in this life.  I think that energy comes through in this video albeit in a simple and understated manner."

It’s music to lose yourself in and unlike anything you’ve heard from Von Till. An album that’s devastatingly beautiful and overwhelming in its scope, reminiscent of the tragic ecstasy of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ recent work as well as the borderless ambient music pioneered by Brian Eno, late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s glacial compositions, and the electronic mutations of Coil.

Watch the video for ‘Indifferent Eyes’ here:

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Photo credit: Bobby Cochran

Wren – Groundswells

Posted: 12 June 2020 in Albums
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Gizeh Records – GZH99 26th June 2020 (Digital) / 25th September 2020 (LP/CD)

Christopher Nosnibor

Wren’s third album – or ‘third chapter in Wren’s seasonal lore exploration’ as the press release puts it – is their first on Gizeh, and promises ‘six melancholy-shrouded sonic ruminations [which] swell between intimate performances devoid of adornment, and evolving soundscapes of auditory ruin’. And pitched as being of interest to fans of Godflesh, ISIS, Kowloon Walled City, Neurosis, it does the job of bringing slow-burning slow-trudging metal with an emotionally-articulate aspect and certain musical nuance.

The first megalithic sonic slab to assail the listener is the nine-minute ‘Chromed’, an epic battery of guitar and anguished vocal, and it piledrives in with a repetitive chord sequence, there are heavy hints of Amenra, and it’s the grainy, earthy quality that’s most reminiscent of Neurosis. There’s a lot of space here between the crushingly weighty power chords that drive, hard, low, and slow, less like a battering ram and more like a tank driving against a wall: slow, deliberate, and completely devastating.

There is detail, there is texture, and there is space within the broad parameters of this ambitious work, giving moments of respite and pauses for reflection between the raging infernos of fury that flare upwards toward the skies from the troughs of gloom. And yes, Groundswells is gloomy, dark, lugubrious, the soundtrack to motional trauma and swings from anguished introspection to annihilative rage.

If the album’s entirety could be encapsulated on a single track, it would be the dynamically-flexible ‘Subterranean Messiah’, which stretches out beyond ten minutes as it works it was way though a series of peaks and troughs, venturing into a range or mood-spaces and sonic terrains to forge a compelling sonic journey that’s utterly immersive. Jo Quail adds layers of subtlety and not to mention sonic depth with her cello work on the track also.

The final song, ‘The Throes’ is a grinding dirge, Godflesh played at the pace of Swans’ Cop. But amidst the torture, punishment, and the anguish – those excoriating vocals and that shrieking lead guitar that battles against the dense, slow chug and grind coalesce to form a perfect prism of pain, the psychological expressed through the physical.

If the band’s name suggests something soft, delicate, melodic, then Groundswells tears those expectations to shreds in the most obliterative way. It’s simultaneously harrowing and beautiful, and an all-consuming experience.

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Listen: ‘Shadows on the Run’ by Steve Von Till

Posted: 3 June 2020 in Reviews
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Steve Von Till swan-dives into the darkness of modern life with a sonic document of rural psychedelia that transcends the physical world—towards a greater spiritual acceptance that connects naturalism, spiritualism, and the corporeal form. As uncertainty abounds, Von Till’s forthcoming album No Wilderness Deep Enough and debut book Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics provide a voice of existential wisdom and experience to offer comfort and perspective in an era of uncharted territory. Today, he’s shared the album’s ethereal second single, “Shadows on the Run” , which you can listen to here:

Von Till’s charted an extraordinary musical path over the last several decades, from his main duties as singer and guitarist of the boundary-breaking Neurosis to the psychedelic music of his Harvestman project and the unique folk songs he’s released under his own name. But No Wilderness Deep Enough is truly like nothing you’ve ever heard from him before—an album that’s devastatingly beautiful and overwhelming in its scope, reminiscent of the tragic ecstasy of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ recent work as well as the borderless ambient music pioneered by Brian Eno, late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s glacial compositions, and the electronic mutations of Coil.

The album’s six pieces of music shape a hallucinatory landscape of sound that plumbs the depths of the natural world’s mysteries and uncertainties—questions that have vexed humanity since the dawn of time asked anew amidst a backdrop that’s as haunting as it is holistic. It’s music to lose yourself in.

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Mirrors for Psychic Warfare – I See What I Became

Posted: 7 September 2018 in Albums
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Neurot – 28th September 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

As you’d perhaps expect from an industrial collaboration between Neurosis’ Scott Kelly and Sanford Parker (Buried at Sea), Mirrors for Psychic Warfare’s second album is heavy on the atmospherics. It’s also simply heavy. The songs themselves are considerably more concise than on the eponymous debut – there are no sprawling ten-minuters here, but they pack an oppressive density. I’ve probably arrived at I See What I Became in the wrong frame of mind: it’s one of those days where the spirits are low and you now that listening to Joy Division or Faith by The Cure would be a bad idea.

I See What I Became isn’t a mopey album. It’s just bleak.

It’s a slow build to start: ‘Animal Coffins’ shifts incrementally from rumbling dark ambience through a slow pulsing beat to a swirling, rhythmic throb of noise with exotic, mystical voices. With processed beats that click and thud, ‘Tomb Puncher’ is a crawling dirge dragged from the techno end of industrial, and is highly reminiscent of PIG, while elsewhere there’s the heavy wheeze of JG Thirlwell at his more experimental. The mechanised rhythms are cold, clinical, but also distorted and decaying at the edges, adding a layer of dirt to a sound that’s encrusted in filth and dried viscera. A sense of the grand and the epic inform the delivery and the production.

There’s an eastern flavour to ‘Rats in the Alley’ with its snaking motifs and frenetic percussion, but it’s partly submerged in a swathe of extraneous noise. There’s a lot of extraneous noise on I See What I Became: the instrumentation melts together so as to render the individual sources indistinguishable. Everything congeals into a heavy-grained sonic wall. On ‘Crooked Teeth’, things crank up slowly, picking up pace, volume and claustrophobic intensity before collapsing into a synapse-flickering cacophony of discord.

What does this articulate, emotionally, psychologically? Far from the clarity of enlightenment the title may suggests, I See What I Became conveys a wallowing in darkness and a sense of resignation, hollowed out, nihilistic. It’s a heavy grind that wears you down, and by the end, I feel drained. I see nothing, and I feel numb.

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Watch: ‘Crooked Teeth’ by Mirrors For Psychic Warfare

Posted: 24 August 2018 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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I See What I Became is the new full-length from Mirrors For Psychic Warfare, the industrial collaboration between Neurosis’ Scott Kelly and Buried At Sea’s Sanford Parker, incoming on Neurot Recordings this September.

Produced by Seward Fairbury (Corrections House) and Negative Soldier, mastered by Collin Jordan (Eyehategod, Indian, Wovenhand, Voivod etc.) with decibel manipulation by Dave French (Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth, The Anunnaki), the duo’s follow-up to 2016’s critically-lauded, self-titled debut boasts eight tracks of unsettling and unapologetic audio demolition.

In advance of its release, the duo have shared an official video for the album track ‘Crooked Teeth’ created by Chariot Of Black Moth, which you can watch here:

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