Neurosis Album: “Souls at Zero”

Description :

Neurosis: Scott Kelly, Steve Von Till (vocals, guitar); Dave Edwardson (vocals, bass); Simon McIlroy (keyboards, samples, tapes); Jason Roeder (drums). <p>Additional personnel: Kris Force (violin, viola); Walter P. Sunday (cello); Sarah Augros (flute); Siovhan King (trumpet). <p>Recorded at Starlight Sound, Richmond, California between February and March 1992. <p>Neurosis's 1991 art-thrash classic, SOULS AT ZERO, was a strange bird even at the time of release. Leaving behind their more conventional punk roots, the band began incorporating samples and electronic textures, as well as a marked tribal folk influence, with their still-monstrous rock. While a legion of atmospheric metal groups including Tool, Isis, and Pelican have since traveled the road Neurosis paved here, it was a virtual wilderness at the time. <p>Hypnotic and menacing songs like "A Chronology for Survival" build a sense of theatrical dread with repeated spidery guitar lines and cold washes of synths, while "Sterile Vision" and "Stripped" flirt with medieval acoustic folk. The injection of space and silence into what had previously been a more standard hard-rock sound changed Neurosis irrevocably, but that's not to say they didn't leave any room for pounding, industrial-charged heaviness. In fact, the tribal-inflected rhythms on SOULS AT ZERO may well be its defining trait, as the bursts of power hit that much harder when they come less frequently. Mysterious, mesmerizing, and eerie, SOULS AT ZERO is metal for modern druids.

I saw this band live twice during their hardcore punk days at Gilman's in the late 80s and again in 99 and they are a great live band. Anyhow maybe if they were not classified as a metal band in music stores they would get a better reception. They are more "expermental/industrial/gothic" than death metal or "hardcore" Agnostic Front and Bad Brains are hardcore!

It all strated, ended and began again here, in all senses. Compared with this fabulous disaster of a record, the thrash bands of the Eighties were merely playing Whoops! Apocalypse with all their talk of nuclear war and The Bomb. Neurosis, on the other hand, acted out an endtime drama that none have been able to eclipse since. 'Souls at Zero' was where the metal serpent ate its industrial-meets-crustcore tail, a musical ouroubourous to match the striking cover image. Little surprise, then , that the Oakland sextet's fourth album is still regarded to this day as an Alpha and omega of extreme music.

This was the album that ruled my world for at least a few months when I was around 18 and just graduating high school. This was so hard and raw, that it just always made me feel emotion. None of their later albums even come close to the energy that Souls at Zero generates. Pain of Mind is probably the next best. I wish the band had made a couple of more albums along the same lines as SAZ, but I guess they wanted to "mature" or whatever. I don't care if the new stuff is more musical. It just doesn't have as much feeling and honesty.