This review starts with a confession. I’d never clicked properly with Neurosis before. I like my post-metal, I like my sludge, but somehow, I was lukewarm on Neurosis. I can offer no reason or explanation. I just was. Still, my musical credo is I’ll try anything twice, so when An Undying Love For A Burning World dropped, it seemed time for another go.
And this time, it clicked.
The funny thing is after listening back to their earlier classics, I’m not sure why this was the album to connect. Neurosis haven’t undergone major changes. An Undying Love For A Burning World isn’t quite on the same level as Times of Grace but it is following the same recipe. Still, nothing is ever entirely the same, and comparing the new album with their classics shows some differences. An Undying Love For A Burning World is, even at its most thunderous, less about the pile-driving riff and most about the atmosphere. The music sits over you like a giant, sullen ash cloud, its thick sound and warm tones forming a vehicle for Neurosis‘ bleak anger at the poisons of the modern world.
The result is that An Undying Love For A Burning World has that mesmerizing, sit back and flow with the music quality that I look for in most long form metal. The vocals of new member Aaron Turner (Isis, Sumac) sit just above the guitars, a hoarse howl that provides a necessary contrast to the lurching rhythms of the music. And while I have talked mostly about this album in terms of atmosphere and sitting back, Neurosis do still know how to bring the violence. They, unsurprisingly, still know how to do the whole loud quiet thing. Take “Blind”, and the way the guitars drop away to leave the flute-like synths of Noah Landis (Tribes of Neurot) to carry the melody before building back around those synths to smash the listener – and then drop away to leave a haunted, skeletal take on the main melody.
Really, take the whole album. Neurosis‘ press release promises an “epic album of colossal hypnotism”, shifting “restlessly between tension and relief” to bring catharsis. It feels cheap as a reviewer to lean so heavily on the band’s own words but when it comes to An Undying Love For A Burning World, they hit the mark so perfectly it’s hard not to use them. It does exactly what it says on the tin. An Undying Love For A Burning World is a wonderful piece of transitionary moods that showcases the full musical and emotional range of sludge, and now that I’m fully on board, I hope it’s the start of another chapter for Neurosis.
