bartosso "I Would Rather Be Ashes Than Dust!"

They are still standing there. Immovable monoliths lashed by storms and parched with scorching sun, oblivious to trends and expectations, the gods of post-metal are still sending shivers down the spine of the world. Neurosis are like a raging storm, consistent yet ever changing, predictable yet still brooding and menacing. No matter how many times you have seen it coming, it fascinates you all the same.

On one hand, the tenth offering from Neurosis is a return to the TIMES OF GRACE sound. Once again raw sludge, doom metal and industrial merge into their inimitable style. On the other hand, post rock echoes of the two previous albums are also audible here. Actually, the only thing that distinctly separates Neurosis albums from each other is the atmosphere. This one is not an exception. GIVEN TO THE RISING is dark and dry like the Canyonlands covered with silver moonlight. A gloomy feel of spiritualism animates this album, shapes its soul in an elegant, understated way. It might be darker and more psychedelic than their previous records, but at the same time it's more sophisticated and restrained in its outbursts of brutality. It somehow reminds me of "There Will Be Blood" by Paul Anderson - sparing with means of expression, almost minimalistic, it's still extremely haunting and evocative.

I can see why this album is revered by the fans despite being a step backwards from THE EYE OF EVERY STORM. Being progressive is not a quality in itself. We often criticize artists for getting stale, but what they really do is loose the passion. If you create music with all your heart and soul, it doesn't really matter if it's progressive or not. Music like that is always fascinating.

Phonebook Eater 6/10

"Given To The Rising" is the table of contents of Neurosis's career.

Finally we reach to the end to Neurosis’s career so far, “Given To The Rising”, the final chapter of the final trilogy. I had pretty high expectations for this, even though I was noticing it didn’t get such great feedback. I gave it a few spins, and I was unfortunately a little disappointed by it, it did not have the good qualities I expected it to have.

Post Metal is a label I never liked, I always found good alternatives. But with “The Eye Of Every Storm” and even more with this one, this choice is harder to maintain. It’s, sure, the usual Atmospheric Sludge Metal, but it’s hard to not fall also into Post-Rock territory in some of these songs. While in the last couple of albums the band has got much more experimental and open towards Post-Rock textures, “Given To The Rising” is much heavier than those releases, more aggressive, more distorted. It has many beastly moments that are gigantic sounding. The building is much more frequent than in “The Eye Of Every Storm”, which leads to one word; nostalgia. I’m guessing that Neurosis wanted to make with this album the “Through Silver In Blood” of the 00’s, but the result is not at all as good. The experimentation here is brave, the sounds the band uses to fill in the music is very fascinating and cool, and that’s one of the best elements this album has going for. It’s obviously a pretty ambitious album, even more than the previous effort, but everything here feels so tired and forced, it’s like Neurosis are using the same exact formulas they usually use on every album before this.

Maybe this is the time when Neurosis is the past, and the bands that feel influenced by them are the future. It would be kind of nice for this to be their last album, I feel like it’s a sort of summary of everything the band has done: ambience, heavy distortion, raging vocals, repetition, build ups, strange samples, Post-rock, Sludge Metal, Progressive. Imagine the band’s career as a book; the previous albums are chapters, “Given To The Rising” is the table of contents.

But enough of the bad talk: there are many moments here that are truly worth the time, like “Hidden Faces”, great hook and good structure, “Water Is Not Enough”, a heavy, strange song. Good moments are present also in the title track, another heavy song, the more experimental “Distill”, and the final epic “Origin”, eleven towering minutes that are very well put together.

A decent album overall, even though it does lack of a few essential elements such as originality. But it has enjoyable moments that a Neurosis fan like me would gladly listen to.

arcane-beautiful Neurosis are the perfect example of, "if you're gonna do a genre which means noise and drone are concerned, do it right." And they did it right. To be honest, there are some arty farty metalheads who can't play instruments and decide that, "Oh, I'll make noise, that's kind of like music." But Neurosis, having been together for over 2 decades.

Sludge as a genre can also be quite tedious as well. To be honest there are some great bands who can make great heavy orientated drone music, like Kyuss & Iron Monkey. But, especially with people attempting to do what was done 15 years ago, it seems like the genre is losing out.

This being my only Neurosis album, I found it hard to grasp with the first few listens, but as I have dwelled within a deeper love of more extreme and avant garde types of music, this album has grown on me. The album is a bit long (70 minutes of slow sludge), but to be honest, this was a good album. They songs had me keenly intrested throughout and I seemed to not get bored, even by random noise.

1. Given To The Rising - The title track, and a great upbeat intro to the album. I love the riff, it's so chatastrophic. The middle section also has some intresting mellotron sections and noise. The end is quite amazing as well.

2. Fear & Sickness - A very doom laden track with great rhythym experimentation. I love the white noise and distortion at the end, very cool.

3. To The Wind - Definetelly a highlight on the album. Love the Cult Of Luna intro and the suprise link into the rocking riff. The spoken passage is also very eerie and effective. Great lyrics and amazing vocals from Scott.

4. At The End Of The Road - Probabbly the most avante garde song on the album. With a simple Native American like drum beat with spoken words with reverb. The lyrics are great as well.

5. Shadow - Very eerie and effective with some great noise and drone.

6. Hidden Faces - I love the repeated word passage throghout. One of the more shorter songs on this album.

7. Water Is Not Enough - I love the riff in this song, it's so dark and disturbing . The weird howls at the end are also very cool.

8. Distill (Watching The Swarm) - The intro is pretty dark and cool. The middle section reminds me of Bossk. The suspended organ part is also very cool, very scary and atmospheric. The ending is pretty cool as well.

9. 9 - Basically Shadow.

10. Origin - I like the intro, very dark with a nice rhythym pattern. I like how interesting spoken word with clean guitar is. The instrumental section is a bit long and boring to be honest. The song gets intresting when the vocals come back again though. Nice faded ending.

CONCLUSION: It's hard for me to say. I'm not the biggest Neurosis fan, so I don't know what this album is like compared to their other albums. All in all, it's a pretty kick ass album. Buy it - In a Clare Sweeney style fashion.