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Rating: 1989. Who would have ever imagined that six guys from Oakland would break through the walls of music, inspiring dozens and dozens of bands, touring all over America and even Europe, churning out masterpieces like Through Silver in Blood?
Yet Neurosis already existed, and they had already released two studio albums. The Word As Law is their third album and it marks the beginning of the end of the group's first phase, the more hardcore phase, to be precise. 70 minutes of music that demonstrate a band not yet completely unique and indispensable as they would later become, but still capable of playing with sound senses (as my teachers say).
The tracklist is quite long and indeed it was difficult for me to listen to this album all at once. And I'm not the type to give up easily. The tracks capture the listener's eardrums, they are angry, energetic (hardcore!), the dirty and well-equalized guitars (sludge!), but they still lack that reflective and more exquisitely introspective component that the band would already partially assume in the more progressive Souls At Zero, to then culminate in the apocalypse of Through Silver in Blood.
Somewhat similar tracks alternate with each other, yet they are able to evoke that oppression and anguish that made them universally known.
Ultimately, not their best album. However, it contains some good moments and we can already savor the genius of these six musicians, worthy protagonists of the fervent international underground scene of the last decade.
Tracklist and Lyrics
07 Insensitivity (00:46)
see the suffering of their lives as you pass them by
Read about the daily tragedies in the paper
Get your depression fix from the T.V. set
It's all too real - can you deal with it?
Quietly whispered lies of happiness
Shouted the truth of being
Face the daily tragedies
with learned insensitivity
Sacrificed souls; preserved sanity
08 Blisters (07:18)
I felt like I was in a cage
My body was numb, my head was fixed just right
Too sacred to speak for fear of what cuts me like a knife
It's a leech on my soul
Draining my blood and leaving me cold
Left with angry deflections of the feelings I have sold
Leaving me cold
Weekly bleeding in this factory
Takes everything away from me
One way out that I can see
This is what you have made for me
Factory
Tied to a cage to slave my life away
Openess makes me an easy prey
I buy the drugs to kill the pain
That this shit causes in my brain
Obedience to this tomb to which I was bred
Force-fed their lies, I'm choking on what I was fed
Destruction fills my head
When I wake to this day that I dread.
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