SOVEREIGN

Sovereign is an EP released by American experimental/ post metal act Neurosis. The EP bridges the gap between the two full-length albums Times of Grace (1999) and A Sun That Never Sets (2001). The EP consists of four songs and has a playing time that says 35:10 minutes so there´s lots of quantity for the money as well as quality.

Three of the songs Prayer, An Offering and Sovereign are in the raw and crushingly heavy/ doomy style that Neurosis also played on Times of Grace but with a touch of the more melodic style played on A Sun That Never Sets. The vocals are raw hardcore styled and only occassionally clean. The fourth song ( well not the fourth but the last I haven´t mentioned) called Flood is a tribal percussion like track. While Prayer, Flood and An Offering are all new tracks, Sovereign is an extented and re-worked track that includes parts from songs from Times of Grace. The ending is for example taken directly from the funeral march like song The Road To Sovereignty from that album.

The musicianship is excellent. It´s an artform to make slow doomy metal sound as vital and exciting as Neurosis do IMO.

The production is pretty raw but a bit more polished than was the case on Times of Grace which is by far the most raw and noisy album from the band.

Sovereign is a great EP from Neurosis and it nicely bridges the gap between the two above mentioned full-length releases. My rating is somewhere between 3 and 4 stars but I´ll go with the 4 star rating here. Neurosis are in a league of their own when it comes to slow experimental doomy metal and once again proves it here. An excellent release.