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Rating: This morning (March 17, 2006) I was on the train to Bari, as usual, due to university. It wasn't just any morning. Considering how much the weather influences my mood, an overcast sky overshadowing the station trains was certainly not a boon for my somewhat depressed soul. I can't quite explain it: I just know that sometimes, it happens. It happens to feel down, tired, to rethink a bit about one’s life and what has been done in recent years. It happens to feel melancholy and nostalgic at a cellular level, for something you’re not even sure what it is, or maybe you subconsciously know and don’t want to admit it. It happens that a poem slips out (as in my case). Yes, it happens.
It also happens that on this pearly gray background one wants to tune some notes to serve as a soundtrack to this little torment. Certainly, it wasn’t a problem: given that since I've been taking the train continuously, I listen to music practically 8 hours a day, I just needed to sort through the pack of CDs I carry and choose one that suited my mood. Then I remembered: didn't my colleague openmind ask me to review Minsk? Indeed... Considering that I love post-core, considering that openmind does too and he is a guarantee, I told myself: maybe today is the best day to listen to them.
Well, I admit it, I made a little mistake. In that instance, as it happens to me other times, I approached the album with the intention of writing a review. This isn’t bad, mind you: but for albums of this caliber, it's perhaps not the right way to approach them. However, I was in a restless mood at that moment and was seeking an outlet. Will Minsk provide it? Let’s see, I thought... I press PLAY, close my eyes... and wait.
The atmosphere is dim. I'm waiting for the bang at any moment. Here it comes: the sky turns black. I start thinking I accidentally put a Neurosis album in the player... Then I remember I didn’t bring the Neurosis specifically because I had Minsk! No, no, these are definitely Minsk. Damn, but this is the apocalypse, I think. It feels like an even more visceral version of Von Till, if possible, I think at that moment. The distortions follow one another in a flood, then everything calms down, a hypnotic loop comes that lifts me off the ground and doesn't know whether to make me cry, despair, or to make me forget everything else, my melancholy, my thoughts, my life. It doesn't matter. The train runs, trees pass by like in an ancestral dance, and Minsk control it completely. Then melancholy turns to hope, and hope quickly transforms into anger, pure ferocity and annihilation, sonic apocalypse. I don't understand anything anymore: but who are these??? Where do they come from? It can't be... I had never heard of a group like this before? I can't believe it... I remain there, bewildered, while the destruction runs in the background... And vanishes into nothing.
No, there's no time, not even to think. The second track begins, “Narcotics And Dissecting Knives” and it seems there's the ghost of Aaron Turner among the group. This time it's truly the journey... It's the music that makes me travel, not the train in which I’m seated. Slow guitar loops, hypnotic and delicate, which rise like a tide and crash against the shore, then a riff that grinds and destroys everything, and once again Neurosis take back the throne. This is sublime. I don’t know what more to think, I’m inhibited, Minsk have injected a dose of morphine into my brain. It's hallucinatory. I want to go back and hear that riff again, but I can’t, I go on by inertia to listen to the rest of the piece, I can’t make it, they won. The melody breaks, rises, it's like a stream that descends into my brain and causes a mental tsunami, indescribable, apocalyptic.
When the atmosphere relaxes, we’re only at the third song, and I'm already done. I turn my eyes to the window, and nature becomes one with the notes... They are enveloping, ecstatic. The trees, the wind... The sun shines in the sky... Only for a little while longer.
Here the train enters a tunnel, and by coincidence, it enters just as the song explodes in its destructive vortex. And the lights in the cabin are off. It's all dark around me, I only feel the speed on my skin, and the music of Minsk reflects me in a state of spiritual peace... I rest my head on the backrest of the seat... I watch the tunnel that flows... I abandon myself to the vortex of “Holy Flower Of The Northstar”... AND I REVEL. A unique and hallucinatory experience, beautiful. The mental journey joined the physical journey and became one with it. There are few bands that would have been able to make me feel those sensations... Minsk succeeded.
I exit the long tunnel, and the bright sun reappears in the sky. But I don’t see it. To me, it seems like I’m still in the tunnel, it seems I’m still surrounded by complete darkness. Then it wasn’t just an impression: Minsk take possession of you if you allow them. Thus, the other songs flow on... How not to mention “Bloodletting And Forgetting”? An acoustic guitar and a mystical wind create an atmosphere that envelops and dulls the senses. A slow, pure voice rises like an invocation. The melody goes on, and it seems as calm and peaceful as much as it is infused with despair inside. It’s subtle, but one can grasp it. Thus, it grows again, and the apocalypse descends on me once more. The last song, the last melody, this time totally ancestral, slowly closes the album. It seems like a cry of hope that rises from the ashes of the apocalypse, which had first annihilated everything around it. A hypnotic and tormented cry.
If there are many bands that have picked up the legacy of Neurosis, Minsk are the ones who have embodied its essence and have thrown it out violently. Nothing more to add...
Hallucinatory.
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