THROUGH SILVER IN BLOOD

Neurosis is not the kind of band that is likely to engage much interest from progressive rock fans, no surprise given their harsh and brutally dissonant sound. But the fact that I'm only the second soul to pop in for a review of this particular masterpiece is still quite surprising.

Through Silver In Blood brings out the best of all things Neurosis had been experimenting with. Tribal beats start pounding and building up with layers of electronic sounds and guitars, at 3 minutes, a heavy bass groove gets this monster rolling and it doesn't let down anymore. As in most sludge-core-whatever bands, the vocals might be the hardest bit to get into. Neurosis has the advantage of featuring two skilled shouters, one with those typical dry hard core shouts and another with a deeper grunting style. Luckily none of them tries to sing during the harsh tracks, an attempt at accessibility that would diminish the impact of this album.

Neurosis are masters at dynamics. Their sound is very rich in texture, as they employ lots of sampling and sound effects. It ties them to the bands they got their inspiration from. Most obviously that is Swans of course, whose trademark is all over the place here, particularly on the hardest hitting tracks like Eye, Purify or Locust Star. Another ground-breaking industrial band that comes to mind is Foetus. The closing Enclosure in Flame has some traits of them.

Neurosis add brutal doses of doom metal to that industrial sound, as if things weren't dense enough yet. No, easy digestible music is not Neurosis' trade. Luckily there's some room to breathe left and right, as in the opening minute of Purify.

Neurosis were one of the biggest creative forces of the 90's, blending very diverse influences into a steaming melting pot that would spew a whole generation of copy-cats. Some of those produced excellent albums as well but none ever matched the fire and inspiration of this masterpiece. Approach with utmost care, this may hurt your ears and crush everything inbetween to pulp.

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