THROUGH SILVER IN BLOOD

One of the most respected metal albums on this site (and probably deserves your respect) considering that prog isn't the first thing to spark when I hear anything from it. Progressive? Absolutely considering all of the post-metal to follow, Neurosis seemed to blaze the trail for most of those acts through this work.

One could call the music of THROUGH THE SILVER AND BLOOD sludge metal rather easily, and it fits considering that most of the songs aren't high octane, have an incredible amount of thickness to them and any changes of song structure are few and far between. If we take the opening title track as an example, Neurosis spend a good amount of time simply setting up the main riff, mostly working with the thickness of the sound as well as the tension. If there is anything that Neurosis do fantastically, it's establishing perfect tension even if the riff they're currently on does not change a lick. It's that anticipation of whether the band will explode musically is what make the long tracks so gripping.

As for the vocals, any chance at normal singing is reserved for the beginning of ''Strength of Fates'' (the common source of the albums' sound exceptions); the vocals are either halfway death grunting or full-blown hardcore punk-ish screams. There is a bit of murmured singing in the beginning of the aforementioned ''Strength of Fates'', but the vocals fit the music well without going into ridiculous pretention territory. They can give you a migraine only if you aren't fully prepared for the onslaught.

To summarize the rest of the album, it's all about the tension. It's heavy, aggressive and booming only when it needs to be, and much of the buildup to this heaviness on the longer sounds implement pianos and softer tones to bother the atmosphere. You know that something loud is coming even if it's just a subtle guitar lick; that's the genius other reviewers have found in this gem and to a certain degree, I buy into that.

THROUGH THE SILVER AND BLOOD is a whole 70+ minutes of mood-setting and tension buildup disguised as a collection of 7 songs. I am not counting the two transition pieces as songs, nor do I count them into my rating this time since they aren't too numerous. This thing is so different from the prog metal you're used to that it's worth the effort to investigate the hype.