The Quietus’ cloven metal hoof is still twitching as earlier this week we got our first listen of Honor Found In Decay, the new album from Californian post-metal pioneers Neurosis, out on October 29 via Neurot, which guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till described to as being their “most diverse yet”.
In an interview with us after the listening session, Von Till also revealed that with the new album, the much awaited follow up to 2007’s Given To The Rising, the band had “found new ways to be heavy”, saying: “The emotions that our music needs to put forth are always going to be heavy, whether it be mellow, subdued or tranquil, in volume or in atmosphere; it’s always got to be emotionally heavy.
“I think that’s what we gained on this record, we gained an increased sense of flow; new ways to contrast dissonance and melody, harmony and disharmony. I always see our evolution as spiralling inward towards a core; we’re constantly getting purer and purer; to the essence of what our music is supposed to be.”
It’s been five years since the group’s last album and whilst many may be asking what took so long, Von Till was keen to point out that, as far as the band were concerned, they hadn’t. “Maybe we deal with more of a glacial concept of time,” he explained. “For us it doesn’t seem like that long – I mean, we’ve been together for 27 years now and [the album] just happened when it was right for it to happen; the whole Given to The Rising time period doesn’t feel that long ago to me.
“We don’t have any kind of schedule hovering over us and it was a couple of years ago when we were finally like, ‘okay, it’s time to start getting it together’, and that some of our seeds were starting to grow.”
Without giving too much away (we’ve got a track by track coming up to do that!), a defining feature of the album is the outstanding contributions of synth/electronics man Noah Landis. “I’m blown away by his manipulation of sounds, samples and keys on this record,” Von Till told us. “Some of my favourite moments are when his sounds rise right out of the thick wall and create this entirely out-of-body experience – for me I think it’s Noah’s most impressive achievement on any of our records yet.
“We could beat out heavy riffs all day,” he added, “but after a while that just isn’t that powerful. We aim to bash through the barriers and the boundaries to find new places and new sounds, and I think we definitely achieved that with this one.”
Neurosis will undoubtedly be unleashing tracks from Honor Found In Decay live when they appear at ATP’s Shellac-curated Nightmare Before Christmas at Camber Sands, November 30 – December 2.
UPDATE: Have a look at the artwork and tracklisting for the new album below:
- ‘We All Rage In Gold’
- ‘At The Well’
- ‘My Heart For Deliverance’
- ‘Bleeding The Pigs’
- ‘Casting Of The Ages’
- ‘All Is Found… In Time’
- ‘Raise The Dawn’
