Today, 20 years ago, namely on April 23rd, 1996 Neurosis' Through Silver in Blood got released. Neurosis is not a metal band that gets mentioned a lot, but this particular album of theirs became a highly influential masterpiece for influencing if not establishing the genre we now categorize as atmospheric sludge metal (or post-metal as some people like to call it). I've heard people call Neurosis the Pink Floyd of metal, but to better understand the aesthetic of Neurosis, I think this live recording of Locust Star in '98 characterizes it pretty well (yet they've always somewhat changed sound and tone from album to album)
Or as another review put the atmosphere of the album:
The site Invisible Oranges did a feature on the album to celebrate its 20th anniversary:
Personally it is perhaps my favorite album with its incredibly oppressive and sinister tone. It is something that almost obliterates you with its soul crushing climactic compositions. It something that transcends a conventional musical experience for me - it became something that changed me after listening to it.
- Through Silver in Blood
- Rehumanize
- Eye
- Purify
- Locust Star
- Strength of Fates
- Become the Ocean
- Aeon
- Enclosure in Flame
Or as another review put the atmosphere of the album:
The site Invisible Oranges did a feature on the album to celebrate its 20th anniversary:
The advent of easy-to-use music editing software offers a modern visualization of music, one which may be more well-suited to Through Silver and Blood than the classic bass and treble clef: the loop. Cycles of bass and guitar notes, rather than playing in synchronicity, repeat, stop, and then repeat again, dogpiled overtop one another like some ur-stringed instrument, a precursor maybe to the eight-stringed guitars and subterranean tunings of today. All three vocalists in Neurosis shout one another down in the middle of the mix, varied slightly in pitch, not so much calling and responding as reacting, paranoid, to unseen events. When something approaches clarity, another sound emerges to obscure it—the epic album highlight ”Purify” reaches something like a tough groove in its second half until John Goff’s bagpipes join in.
Often these instructions are samples, and they dominate other sounds often, either as a repeated motif, like the feedback squeal in the title track, or on the cacophony of voices babbling about metaphysics on “Rehumanize” or the atomic bomb on “Become the Ocean,” the two interludes which roughly chop the album into three acts.[...]
The members of Neurosis offer few insights. While they will play “Locust Star” and the title track, but rarely play anything else from the record (it’s been 9 years since they played “Purify”. Rarer is any communication on it. There’s no Decibel Hall of Fame entry for the band, and my guess is that an unwillingness to talk about Through Silver in Blood explains their absence. At this last Roadburn, Ian Cory told me that the band deflected questions about these songs during their Q&A. According to him, Steve Von Till said they would have to “burn the place down” in order to play any deep cuts.
Personally it is perhaps my favorite album with its incredibly oppressive and sinister tone. It is something that almost obliterates you with its soul crushing climactic compositions. It something that transcends a conventional musical experience for me - it became something that changed me after listening to it.
