Neurosis
Given To The Rising

Scott Kelly has been a great reader of Cormac McCarthy for years, and this has a significant echo in the work of the legendary Oakland band.

In the imagery of Neurosis, we can recognize from McCarthy a powerful epic and dark vein, proud isolationism, and the conviction that the world is racing towards a very imminent end, "Water Is Not Enough", hinting at the collapse of society and the absolute wasteland, places where man will have to fight with his peers to survive.

The artwork suitably accompanies the biblical/millennarist concept: a stone horse with two menacing horns, hollow eyes, Apocalypse clouds in the background, and an enigmatic figure cloaked in black under an eclipsed sun.

The aesthetic of despair and the pornography of desolation are the expressive keys of this group, which, unlike many other bands labeled as "Post-core", can focus its firepower on a single target, hitting dead center.

There is no dispersion in the latest Neurosis album, all tracks proceed relentlessly, transporting the listener to another dimension made of contemplation and terror. Meditation and transcendence welcome us without the need for additional effort to enter the album's sonic universe, and herein lies the true victory of 'Given to the Rising': there are no useless or distracting passages, everything is calibrated like in a very long suite, the electronics and guitars interpenetrate sometimes expanding, sometimes imploding. What stands out the most is the refinement of Noah Landis' electronic interventions, the cutting precision of the riffs, earthy and ruthless.

The most solemn and annihilating tracks: "Distill, Water Is Not Enough, Fear and Sickness", continue and complete the discussion that Neurosis began in "Through Silver in Blood" passing through the nervous and sick serenity of "A Sun That Never Sets" and "The Eye of Every Storm", reclaiming the title of inventors of a genre/non-genre, where the violence of the screams and guitars manage to become an elegant texture, absolutely not an end in itself and useful for the development of the "story" that the album presents.

Alongside these more "traditional" tracks are the experiments and spoken-word of "Shadow", "At The End Of The Road" and "Nine" that refine the research undertaken with Tribes of Neurot and Scott Kelly's Blood and Time, these are meditative and ambient compositions where electronic effects and noise frame the narration of filtered and ancestral voices. Neurosis then found its compositional zenith in "Origin", with its arcane and insinuating beginning that penetrates under the skin to then explode and close in a bitter invocation to the spirits that hold the fate of this earth.

"Given To The Rising" is a record written and played with the soul and represents the sum of everything Von Till and company have done to date, adding to "heavy" music the timeless value that characterizes true art: heart.