ENEMY OF THE SUN

Dark, powerful, ground-breaking and intense for some, soulless and noisy for others. There's not much of an inbetween position when it comes to Neurosis. And concluding from the masses of reviews here, it's quite obvious where most prog fans stand is this matter.

Neurosis' 4th album is a newt important step away from their thrash and hard-core roots. In fact, Enemy of the Sun is their first album that I would place in the sludge/doom style that they have become famous for. It's a particularly dense and difficult album, having next to no melody, a pace that has become so slow that it is mostly nothing but a slowly grinding pulse, loud and dead-heavy guitar dissonance and big distorted bass lines that whirl through the colossal dirty sound. There are also some more up-beat sections where they unleash their wild tribal beats. Combined with the thunderous bass it makes for a gripping listen. This isn't music you play in the background, it's demanding and compulsive. The album ends with a 26 minute experimental piece, half of which consisting of repetitive tribal drumming and the other half of noisy samples. After the 45 preceding minutes of sonic assault, it's too much really as it fails to stir the entrancing effect that it was meant to produce.

Overall, this is an astonishing album that redefines challenging and that makes words like 'listening pleasure' and 'enjoyment' awkwardly alien when you return to earth after spending more then an hour in this barren wasteland. Due to the overindulgent closing track, it's slightly less effective then the two masterpieces around it, but it sure is an exceptional and defining album.