Neurosis
The Eye Of Every Storm

The question is the following: as of today, which great artist makes avant-garde rock?
Yes, beyond the labels of post rock, experimental, progressive, I think you understand what I'm referring to (oh no, not everyone — we weren't talking about the Muse).

Picking up a pencil and finding the first piece of paper with just enough space to write more than a line and less than a scroll, I tried to list the first artists that came to mind, to answer that question. However, I avoid flaunting my knowledge or ignorance on the subject (but I reserve the right to mess up some of the space intended for comments later!), and I immediately point out one of the names that most reference the term avant-garde mentioned earlier: Neurosis. And on this occasion, let me tell you about their new and superb album, just released these days by Neurot Recordings (by the way, watch out for the link).

It is a mature work, almost a point of arrival, but absolutely not definitive, of these brave men from Oakland, San Francisco. Led by the shadowy and daring figure of singer and guitarist Steve Von Till, Neurosis can be considered true rock futurists: in front of their works, we cannot distinguish the prototype, the study, the replica, or the variant, but only the flow, the desire to continue one step further, that same step that allows them to create a musical genre by themselves or with a few other friends.

Their music this time starts from Steve's solo experiences, perhaps from the reconstructions of the Tribes of Neurot they are part of, and certainly from last year's work with Jarboe, the conspiratorial singer of the historic Swans, to embark on other paths. Places where explosions (the opening Burn), whirlwind progressions (A Season in the Sky), fleeting acoustic impressions scattered here and there along the way, distorted and prolonged notes that in my imagination evoke a dissociation from the rest of the world, thread by thread (Bridges), create a whole, a block of stone that no longer wants to leave the body it has managed to enter not subtly at all.
We couldn't predict the addiction from the first listen. A feeling that in recent years someone might have experienced with the material proposed to us on various occasions by Maynard James Keenan.

The Eye of Every Storm is therefore a work to be promoted with full marks, another success in the catalog of the Californian band, to be worthily placed in your discotheque, alongside the other masterpieces of the group. With this music, one arrives elsewhere.