Following my previous writing on the albums Through Silver in Blood and Times of Grace by influential Post Metal act, Neurosis , this writing will focus on an album that celebrates its 20th anniversary today.
Let's talk about Neurosis' A Sun That Never Sets.
Neurosis circa 2016
(Again, I'm copying the introduction to the band, which was written in my review of their other albums):
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).
A Sun That Never Sets was released on the 7th of August 2001, and is their last album to be released on the record label Relapse. The band would later release an accompanying DVD of full length film for each of the songs, which I shall be linking in each song titles to as we go through each of the album's tracks.
(Although it is too simple to sum it up as such - as evident by the list of personnel involved in each of the videos on the DVD here - I think you could attribute the visuals of the DVD to Josh Graham, who had taken over as the visual artist of the band after the release of Times of Grace)
The album continues the template set out by Times of Grace with an opening instrumental, Erode. But unlike Times of Grace, the following track, The Tide, begins not with bludgeoning riffs, but with feedback noise, synthesizer, and acoustic guitar. Given the sparse instrumentation, the single plucking note of the bass around 1:05 sounds like a rumble of thunder in the distance, with vocalist Steve Von Till asking the question:
Where are they now?
From here, the song points towards a lost civilization, with lines such as
They are gone
I saw them run
Run to the sea
Under the waves all has been said
Can you hear them?
Their voices are free
alluding to Atlantis, or perhaps other ancient civilization swallowed by the ocean. With climate change being a serious concern now, one could perhaps draw parallel to the song with how our own civilization will end up in the near future... But back to the song.
Robert Stacy-Judd’s 'Destruction of Atlantis' (1936)
It isn't until 2:21 that the drums kick in, accompanied with mournful string parts... before resuming back into the synthesizer and acoustic guitar parts, with the bass playing a more significant part. A burst of feedback creeps in at 4:50, with the rest of the band going all hard, as second singer Scott Kelly repeats:
Their voice carries on
On the waves
The next track, From The Hill, begins with clean guitar strumming, before Scott Kelly rasps:
From the hill
I've been watching
Stealing the light
with further lyrics alluding to some sort of ritual - perhaps a sort of initiation of the narrator into some cult?
In my dreams
I touch animal blood
Rich earth swallow it down
Deep into my soul
and
It feeds her war
And raises my true nature
When I awake I am whole
All the gods are screaming
Around 5:26, the song slows down to a crawl, with bagpipes appearing around the 6:09 mark. At a runtime of 9:26 minutes, this is one of the longer cuts on the album.
The fourth track, the title track, begins with drums and synthesizer part that always gave me the impression of a building creaking at its seams. The song seems to present the thesis statement of this album, calling for the rediscovery of our roots to previous generations. Steve Von Till states:
A sun that never sets burns on
New light is this river's dawn
When to speak of a word so old
Is to relearn what is known
A time to think back and move on
Rebuild the loves of lives long gone
Blood imageries is used to further points of our connection to those who have lived, that we are all part of the collective that is the human race:
The blood that flows through me is not my own
The blood is from the past, not my own
The blood that leads my life is not my own
The blood is strength, I'm not alone
As mentioned by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant in Dictionary of Symbols: "Blood symbolizes all the integral qualities of fire and the heat and vitality inherent in the sun".
The fifth track, Falling Unknown, is the longest track on the album, at runtime of 13:11 minutes. The song uses the motif of nature quite prominently in the lyrics, with the opening lines of:
With the wind at your back and the light in your eyes
The freeze of your blindness will show
leading away to a series of questions, still with the imageries of nature:
Under the cloud cover, the flares signal change
Will you ever know?
The fields they are burning, the smoke chokes your breath
Will you stand or run?
At this point, the guitar parts repeatedly play the part of alternating two notes, with two chords progression:
You dream of a mountain, the peaks rise to the sky
Will you answer its call?
Is your heart still beating? Can you feel this at all?
This landslide will bury us all
before shifting in structure around 2:48 to a much heavier section, and then slowing things down to a crawl... and then returning into the repetitive two notes-two chords part, before the last series of question was asked:
With the storm on your mind and the clouds in your eyes
Will you survive?
The song then picks up into another heavy section, slowing things down again, with Steve Von Till not asking questions:
Lie in wait, I will lie awake
The band then eventually stops. A pervading synthesizer part hangs in the background, as the drums and guitars builds up the song - with piano and strings parts joining in as well - from the 6:02 mark until around the 10:53 mark, where the three vocalist (Steve Von Till, Scott Kelly, and Dave Edwardson) sings:
Falling through a world unknown
Eventually all of the instrument drops out, leaving only the vocal parts... And just when you thought the song would end on such an effective note, the other instruments crash back in, jolting you out of your reverie.
Could the image of nature be indicating the journey of one's mind into one's natural state of being (perhaps through some sort of meditation, psychedelic substance, or other medium - maybe, say, a music, such as the one found on this album...?), a world previously unknown to the narrator?
Such a suggestion to the search for illumination persist in the next track, From Where Its Roots Run, in which a vocalist recites what appears to be Germanic runes. Given that Steve Von Till had mentioned about Germany history in some other interview, it is not altogether unreasonable to assume it is him reciting these lines:
Fehu, Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raido, Kenaz, Gebo, Wunjo, Hagalaz,
Nauthiz, Isa, Jera, Eithwaz, Perth, Algiz, Sowilo, Tiwaz, Berkano,
Ehwaz, Mannaz, Laguz, Ingwaz, Othila
The video for the song depicts an individual being suspended from a tree by their feet, which coupled with the Germanic runes, seem to be referencing to the Norse god Odin. According to James George Frazer, writing in The Golden Bough: "The human victims dedicated to Odin were regularly put to death by hanging or by a combination of hanging and stabbing, the man being strung up to a tree or a gallows and then wounded with a spear. Hence Odin was called the Lord of the Gallows or the God of the Hanged, and he is represented sitting under a gallows tree. Indeed he is said to have been sacrificed to himself in the ordinary way, as we learn from the weird verses of the Havamal, in which the god describes how he acquired his divine power by learning the magic runes..."
Gjellerup (1895)
The seventh track, Crawl Back In, seems to be detailing an interpersonal relationship between the narrator and another person.
With lines such as
When you come back I won't know you
We won't fit right like it was before
Time is truth, hard and cruel
and my heart has turned to stone
I crawled back in, I am hungry
I made sure my traps are set in space
and
We laid so long
Eternal night
In my heart it never left
I'll stand here
You go on
When you see me I'll be gone
Every road brings us on
The past is never forgiven it is atoned
I'd say it's their most straightforward song in the album.
The eight track, Watchfire, appears to be dealing with the theme of death, with the video showing imageries of huge stone structures (megalith?):
A torch in a black sea
Our stones still stand
To remind us of loss
A loss mirrored on our souls
A watchfire brings strength
Breathe in the heat
In the eternal path, armoured against life
Illustration by Rowye
I'm unsure what the juxtaposition between a fire and stones are meant to signify (and the video doesn't really offer much other than the fact that the 'stones' may be referring to megalith). Perhaps it's meant to invoke the image of the life of the previous civilization when they have earlier set up these structures?
Such reference to stones continues into the final song of the album - which was preceded by the instumental Resound, prominently featuring the sound of bell being struck.
Going in the final song, Stones from the Sky, the bell part is repeated throughout most of the song, with the guitar part repeating between two chords. Here, the images of stones returns once more:
Once is enough, trial is alone
Grace fall into us
All through the night, Father I crawled
Sun of my soul be revealed
Walking amongst the stones from the sky
Feeling their rhythm wash over me
The song primarily features the image of a raven in flight; given the mentioning of Father in the lines, and the lines
Rite of this waring god
Destructive, alive, frees you now
Rivers of fear, don't you know?
Vigil of faith stills you now
as well as the fact that ravens are associated with Odin, the song appears to be a continuation of From Where Its Roots Run, with the song (and the album) ending on the question:
Wägner (1882)
You've been shown over and over, don't you know?
The songs then takes flight (pun intended), continuing on after the end of the vocal parts, with the repeated two chords guitar parts as the song builds up into tremolo guitar picking and distorted noisy parts - and at one part near the end, the songs intentionally glitches out (giving the impression of a CD player being stuck) before the volumes rises out into a screech.
It's one of my personal favourite closer to an album - not only for the band, but overall music in general. One writeup discussing on the theme of the album namedropped Pink Floyd when discussing of the song, which I think is a good descriptor as any to describe the way the song gradually builds and builds before exploding.
It's one of my personal favourite closer to an album - not only for the band, but overall music in general. One writeup discussing on the theme of the album namedropped Pink Floyd when discussing of the song, which I think is a good descriptor as any to describe the way the song gradually builds and builds before exploding.
Neurosis (year unknown)
I'm rather curious on what fans and critics felt back when they had first listened to the album during the initial release date, following the dense and heavy three strings of albums being released prior to this (Enemy of the Sun, Through Silver in Blood, Times of Grace).
A casual browsing of review sites suggested that some felt that the band was losing it, that they've gone 'artsy fartsy' / pretentious, with even much more prominent mix of folk and psychedelia into the songs (which on hindsight was already hinted at in Times of Grace).
Personally, I'd say this is actually my favourite album from the band (Stones from the Sky by itself is a strong point for me), where they have a good mix of heavier moments (The Tide), occult theme (From Where Its Roots Run), great imageries (A Sun That Never Sets), long epic (Falling Unknown, Stones from the Sky) and introspective moments (Crawl Back In). While it is undeniable that Through Silver in Blood is most likely the heaviest thing, ever, and Times of Grace represent their peak in their craft, there's something about the album that makes it much easier for me to return to. Maybe because compared to the more heavier feel of the albums that precede it (both in terms of sound and theme), this album feels much more hopeful?
Well, maybe hopeful is not the right word... Maybe it's more accurate to say that with this album, the band offers an invitation to the listener to learn about the past, on how previous civilization is more in tune with nature and wisdom. I think that is the main reasons why imageries such as the ocean, mountains, stones, and the sun continue to appear throughout the album - they speak to the primal side of us that longs to the return to the natural state of being.
You've been shown over and over, don't you know?
No comments:
Post a Comment