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Neurosis > Fires Within Fires > Reviews > Thumbman
Neurosis - Fires Within Fires

30 Years In 40 Minutes - 89%

Thumbman, November 25th, 2016

Neurosis has long been a been a band that I'm liable to gush about to an embarrassing degree. Ever since I heard the spine-tingling intro to "Souls at Zero" as a gangly 15 year old, I knew I had found something very special. In fact, they were one of the bands that really started drawing me to metal when crust punk made up the bulk of my sonic diet. Since then, my appreciation for the band's storied career has only grown. They had always evolved, always pushed forwards to new sounds. Then in 2012 I was thrown into a bit of a crisis of faith - after two decades of great albums (with Souls at Zero being the first and greatest masterpiece), they had found themselves in a bit of a rut with their latest offering Honor Found in Decay. It wasn't a bad album, mind you. But it was their first where it felt they were on autopilot, like they were making an album because making a new album every couple of years is just what bands do. Their other albums had been statements; self-contained worlds. This was just . . . kind of there.

I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a bit worried about where they'd go from there. Had they finally run out of ideas? Maybe it was just an uncharacteristic stumble - Type O Negative did release the lightweight filler-laden Life is Killing Me between two of the most fantastic albums of their career, after all. My fears worsened when I saw the artwork, which is not at all bad but still feels very obvious for the band. The song titles all sounded pretty routine as well, and only having five songs was another red flag - Neurosis albums routinely breeze past the hour mark and was five extremely long songs really the best way to go after the last album's most boring songs were quite long (little did I know that the album would only be 40 minutes long)? Soon they released a trailer from the album, giving us snippets from a few different songs and I was instantly relieved and filled with excitement - while nothing sounded that different from what they've done before, it all sounded pretty stellar. Oh, and they riff again. They fucking riff again. One of the biggest letdowns of Honor was the lack of memorable riffs.

So in the end what do we get? Well, I wouldn't rank this particularly high in the Neurosis discography, but that doesn't mean this isn't really good. They've set the bar ludicrously high with their decades-long run of fantastic albums, and while this isn't quite on the same level as most of them, Neurosis have clearly steered themselves back in the right direction. Fires Within Fires doesn't really operate on the same modus operandi we have come to expect from Neurosis. Their albums tend to latch on to a particular element of their sound and create an expansive experience out of it. Fires has many of the tried and true tropes of Neurosis in it, but it doesn't come off an exploration of a particular facet of their sound. Rather, while still doing some new things, this provides a panoramic glimpse of their past achievements. In essence, at this point in time, Neurosis is Neurosis's primary influence.

Is this a good thing? I suppose, as long as this an interesting anomaly in their discography and doesn't become the new template. Anyway, for someone who is so nerdy about this band as me, picking apart which songs draw from which past works is really damn fun. The album starts off with Bending Light. The first part of the track is composed of twisted, vaguely dissonant atmospheric lingering, which reminds heavily of Times of Grace. Then seemingly out of nowhere, they burst out a seasick crusty riff (it's pretty amazing how the lyrics speak of being lost in a raging sea, and the riff actually gives off the feeling of a violent ocean storm), which draws heavily on their crust/hardcore work of the early 90s. I wouldn't be surprised if "A Shadow Memory" was originally slated to be a song for Given to the Rising but didn't end up being finished on time. The vibes are very congruent with that album, very lush and dark, giving off a feeling of wandering the desert at night. "Fire is the End Lesson" seems to be a reinterpretation of the Times of Grace Sound. You've got the vocal pileup thing which Neurosis relied heavily on in the 90s, but without the same crustiness in the vocals. The big riff at the start is really cool, it's quite dissonant, but also oddly bouncy and fun. Neurosis is a band that's all about contrast and this is a great example of this.

The second half of the album, comprised of the album's two longest songs, is where shit really starts getting real. The only thing that gets close to this on the first three songs is the second half of "Bending Light". "Broken Ground" is probably the most obvious song on here, but it's also one of the best. It is essentially a look back on everything the band has done in the 21st century. While the atmospherics are on point, and the riffs engaging, what really makes this shine through is the songwriting. This sounds like it probably started as a Steve Von Till solo song, and then he decided that it would work better if Neurosis went to work on it. The song structure works great, the interplay between harsh and clean vocals is at its best, and everything flows seamlessly. As good as "Broken Ground" is, "Reach" is Fires Within Fires pinnacle. It doesn't sound so much like A Sun that Never Sets as it sounds like something they might have come up with on the next album if they chose a different direction. It definitely has the atmosphere of that album, but works it into a lush, brooding psych rock song, featuring some immense croons from Von Till. The mid-section of the track is filled out by foreboding psychedelic wandering and then fucking BOOM - Neurosis go reeling back into the crawling darkness. We are met with a riff that would fit in very comfortably on Through Silver in Blood and some crusty howls from Scott. The riff has a very cool weird effect on the end that reminds of "Celestial (The Tower)" from Isis.

One thing that really works in Fire's favour is the immediacy of the album, something Scott has admitted was lacking in Honor Found in Decay. Bringing back the big riffs is much to thank for this, and this is indeed their riffiest in quite some time. Not only do we have titanic crust riffs smashing their way back into the fold, but there are a few stoner riffs here, which is pretty new for them (but I guess it makes some sense - Jason is now in Sleep). The humongous stoner riff in "Broken Ground" is simultaneously one of the most badass and the most fun stoner riffs I've ever heard. The surprisingly bouncy one at the end of "A Shadow Memory" is pretty fun, too. The atmospherics are on point, as one would expect with these guys, but Noah's work on the keys are a bit more subtle than last time, soaking the tracks in otherworldly atmosphere rather than becoming a lead instrument as we often saw on Honor (he does make his keys sound like some off-kilter woodwind in "Broken Ground", though). When a song comes to an end, often we're left with Noah's immersive soundscapes lingering for a few moments. The drumming is the least tribal in a while, with Jason making excellent use of the cymbals and largely relying on more utilitarian rock patterns. The production is as big and balanced as we'd expect from Albini, but also a tad muddier than usual, with this balance allowing every element of their sound to shine through, but also allowing the heavier moments to be much more forceful. The drum sound is particularly killer.

As for complaints, while their aren't a wealth of them, this isn't one of Neurosis's best albums and there's a few reasons why. While I wouldn't say they totally played it safe and I did enjoy the throwbacks, a few more new ideas would have been cool - especially seeing as new ideas are what the band thrives on. They've explored so much it's hard to even know if there's very much unexplored territory left for their sound. Perhaps the biggest lost opportunity for this album was Dave Edwardson, while I understand leaving his vocals off of A Sun that Never Sets, The Eye of Every Storm and even Honor Found in Decay, the more aggressive sections of Fires were just screaming for his ungodly cavernous bellows. While I did like the drumming, imagine how insane it would have been if Jason went full TSiB elephantine tribal war drumming on the ending riff of "Reach". In all, there's not much to complain about, and if there's any reason this won't be considered one of Neurosis's classics, it is because it fails to cover the new ground that they typically do.

This year, Neurosis embarked on a host of 30th anniversary shows, being joined by a host of bands - from Discharge to Earth - all fitting in somehow to their vast wealth of different sounds. With these shows they dug deep into their discography, playing songs that had long been retired from their live sets. Hell, they even delved into their first two hardcore albums. Fires Within Fires really encompasses the spirit of those shows - they spend more time reinventing the old than beating their way into new sonic territory. And fuck it, they deserve to sit back for one album and have a fun time configuring something that encompasses the scope of their entire career into one lean, mean album. I only hope that they leave this approach as a one-off venture.