FIRES WITHIN FIRES

Stylistically the material on "Fires Within Fires" features very few surprises if you're already familiar with the band's atmospheric sludge/post metal style. It's slow, doomy, and organic music featuring both deep register clean male vocals and harder edged hardcore shouting vocals. The song structures are adventurous and you never really know where a song is going before you reach the end and look back at an intriguing compositional structure. The whole thing is packed in an organic sounding production courtesy of Steve Albini. The sound production takes the meaning of organic maybe a bit too far though, as this sometimes sound like it was recorded live in someone's garage. I know some people love a stripped down and raw sound production like that, and under the right circumstances a sound production like that can work wonders. Here though I think it takes the power out of the music and even the most heavy and punchy parts of the album, lack energy and conviction.

To my ears Neurosis also seem to have lost a bit of their creative spirit on "Fires Within Fires"...and don't get me wrong here, because as mentioned above this is still very adventurous music, but it's like they've made this album before a few times, and I'd like to think of them as innovators who take chances and who challenge their audience. We don't really get much of that here. "Fires Within Fires" is Neurosis playing it completely safe and since they've also tuned down on their more aggressive side, the album does become a bit tedious if you're not in the right mood. However it still speaks volumes of their general qualities that one of Neurosis lesser albums still deserves a 3.5 star (70%) rating, and I'm probably just being a bit hard on them, but that's only because I expect so much from them considering their impressive back catalogue.

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