What's this? Touhou meets Neurosis?
A rather odd choice, if I do say myself, given the two sharing almost no similarity whatsoever (and I’m curious at how many out there who happens to be fans of both)... but if I could use the former as an excuse to talk more about this mighty band, well then…!
With their sixth record celebrating its 20 year release anniversary today, I figured this would be a good occasion to talk about this phenomenal record, and explore some aspect of this influential yet enigmatic band.
A historical context for those unfamiliar with the band: Neurosis originated from Oakland, California, formed in the year 1985 by Scott Kelly (guitar and vocal), Dave Edwardson (bass), and Jason Roeder (drum). Originally starting as a punk hardcore band, the band then added second guitarist Chad Salter (join in 1987), later to be replaced by Steve Von Till in 1989. Their first two records, Pain of Mind (1987) and The Word As Law (1990) saw them playing hardcore punk/crossover thrash style, were not well received critically. At this point, the band subsequently added a keyboardist (Simon McIlroy in 1990, later replaced by Noah Landis in 1995), beginning to move away from their hardcore roots to embrace the emerging sludge and doom metal scenes. Their third release, Souls at Zero, released in 1992, saw them experimenting with the sound of doom metal, combined with elements as varied as post-punk and gothic rock, noise rock and industrial music, psychedelic and progressive music, and folk music. The record, as well as their subsequent releases in the 90s, helped spearhead a movement which would subsequently be termed Post Metal, and in the years to come Neurosis would continue to be a towering influential force in this movement and beyond, influencing artists such as Isis, Cult Of Luna, Pelican, Mastodon, Yob, Gojira, to name a few.
While some of the bands influenced by them have come to receive critical and commercial success, Neurosis themselves are apparently not that well known among the public. I would like to think that this has something to do with their DIY (Do It Yourself) ethos brought upon by their early hardcore background, where they remain fiercely independent and avoid any attempt to break into the mainstream (they started their own record label, Neurot Recordings, in 1999, and have continued to release their post-2003 works on this label).
Times of Grace was released in the 4th of May 1999, three years after the release of the groundbreaking Through Silver in Blood. The record marked a distinct shift in their style following their 1996 release: while maintaining the sonic heaviness set by the previous record, Times of Grace see Neurosis incorporating a more softer side, with addition of ambient passages, folk elements, and non-metal instrumentations such as strings, brass and bagpipe(!). This record also mark their first instance of working with the renowned recording engineer Steve Albini, an ongoing relationship that continue up until their recent release in 2016.
Before going further into the album, it must be stated that Neurosis is not a band that is easy to get into on first listening. My own experience with the band see me going through their discography chronologically, after hearing them being touted as influential to the glut of post metal bands: at this point, I have listened extensively to Isis and Cult Of Luna, and was curious to find out about this much heralded forefather to the sound these bands were playing.
I wish I could say that my first listening to them, like, totally blew my mind, man... but in actuality I remembered not being that impressed with my first listening of the records, finding them too abrasive and unwelcoming to listen to. It took a few listening for me to ‘get it’, and I can only imagine that not many are willing to commit their time to listening, especially if they were not into the extreme spectrum of metal.
For those who want a more easier starting point to the band, I would recommend checking their 2001 release, A Sun That Never Sets, which see them incorporating more folk elements in their sound, or their 2004 release, The Eye Of Every Storm, which they lean much closer to a Post Rock sound - with the latter perhaps their most gentle (and yet most personal) record throughout their discography.
Anyway, on the the album:
After the electronic-tinged of opener Suspended In Light, the second track, The Doorway kicks off with pummeling guitar part, before the rest of the bands join in with their sonic assault, leading to the first instance of lyrics from the record, with Scott Kelly shouting these lines:
"To burrow my way through death and flesh
All beasts I let out - Ill buried untold
To lock my cage - Unleash the fallen
Fear eyes contain light in my soul"
And truly this song is a beast: the howled vocals, the low tuned guitar parts, and the relentless rhythm does not let up. In the later part of the song the guitar parts give the impression, as someone had once memorably commented, of nails being hammered, to the lyrics of "I'm nailed to the crossroads / searching for the piece of me"
The track ends with burst of feedback and guitar noises... Before tribal drumming and glitchy electronic sounds open to the third track, Under The Surface (a personal favourite off the record for me). This track, along with the track that follows, Last You'll Know, see the band exhibiting a potent mixture of heaviness and the more subdued part, with the latter even incorporating synth and bagpipe amongst the other instruments. If The Doorway is oppressive, these two tracks feels positively airy in its more quiet moment.
The remaining tracks see them veering into doomy industrial sound (Belief), the rather straightforward End Of The Harvest, to the surprisingly gentle Away (with most of the track being sung in clean vocals)... before it all came crashing in the second last track of the record, the title track. Along with The Doorway, these two tracks are perhaps the heaviest in the whole record, acting almost as a sort of a bookend; and if the former is taken as an initiation to the musical journey of the record, the latter see this whole journey coming to a close, with Von Till stating:
"All structures collapse, mysteries unfold
Borne from the skies in these times of grace"
At this point it might be noted that Neurosis aren't really one to write straightforward lyrics, with this album exhibiting their affinity for the obscure and the occult. I won't make any pretension that they write the most profound and - to use that much-abused term - deep lyrics, but I have always seen their music to be one to be experienced viscerally rather than intellectually. Still, a cursory browse of the lyrics does suggest the narrator going on a journey on the search for truth, with lines such as
"Strong hearts soar through blindness
Tearing the fog, tearing the eyes to clarity
To a place where truth is seen"
or as it is in the penultimate song off the record:
"The secrets of stars hide within the grey
This grey will fade, so will the stars cease to shine"
As with the opening of the record, the eleventh and final tracks, Road To Sovereignty is an instrumental - albeit this being an relatively stripped down acoustic piece with piano, strings and brass instruments accompanied by the drums. The two opening and closing tracks are however far from being the only instrumental in this record, with another two tracks, Exist and Descent, acting as intermission between songs.
I mentioned these instrumental tracks because there is another side to this album: Tribes of Neurot - a side project of Neurosis which further explored the tribal and ambient aspect of their sound - had released Grace in the same year: an accompanying record to Times Of Grace that were meant to be played simultaneously. On the surface, Grace consist of similarly length track to Times Of Grace, wholly consist of ambient sound with generous helping of spoken word parts and weird noises. Interestingly enough, the spoken word parts were not from samples as I had originally thought they were - all were entirely recorded from scratch, with most apparently being stream-of-consciousness ramblings rather than premeditated statements...
Listening to the two records simultaneously is a truly... mind-bending experience, and I found somewhat incomplete whenever I subsequently listen to Times Of Grace without the accompanying part from Grace (a good example is the song Away, where the extra spoken words and vocal parts from the Grace side really bring a new feeling to the original). Ideally the two records were meant to be listened together on two different player/sound source, but even listening to the two records simply overlaid on top of each other such as this upload would totally change the listening experience of the record(s). I remembered the first time listening to the two records and being genuinely freaked out, wondering if this was what an acid trip would be like...
(For those curious about hearing the mindset and process behind the creation of Grace, you can read the interview posted here.)
While Through Silver In Blood would be heralded by many as the best Neurosis work (it is certainly their most heaviest and dense record, ever), there are a handful of people who asserted that Times Of Grace is the record that represent the best that the group has to offer. I used to think those people were mistaken, or wanting to be contrarian, having initially not being impressed with the record when exposed with the uncompromising sound of their earlier records... But now, looking at the sheer ambition and vision of this record, supplemented with them crafting some of their heaviest songs in their entire discography, I have come to agree that this indeed represent a band at the top of their creative apex.
This is a record that showcases a band that was not afraid to experiment while not compromising their vision; a search for a greater truth, "the secrets (of stars) hide within the grey". Could this be why the fire imagery was used for the record cover; that the fire not merely one that consumes, but one that illuminates? In the Grace version of Road To Sovereignty, a voice intones:
"Standing in the doorway
All is revealed in our solace
The wind feeds the fire
On the road to sovereignty"
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