- Country: USA
- Style: Post-metal / sludge metal
- Label: Neurot Recordings
- Release date: 20 March 2026
It arrived without warning, like weather. No singles, no countdown, no press cycle. One morning in March, the first Neurosis album in ten years was simply there, and the silence around it made its opening shout land even harder: fifty-two seconds of voices declaring that we are torn wide open.
What follows is an hour of scorched earth and slow-burning light. “Mirror Deep” hits first, a landslide of dissonant riffs and feedback that feels like the ground giving way under the Oakland band’s feet and then refusing to stop moving. Noah Landis’s synths and samples hum underneath everything like power lines in a storm, turning the heaviest passages into something closer to machinery, or prayer.
The biggest change is a new voice. Aaron Turner, the mind behind Isis and Sumac and a musician who grew up in the long shadow Neurosis cast, steps into the space left by founding member Scott Kelly. He doesn’t imitate; he joins. His roar tangles with Steve Von Till’s gravel and Dave Edwardson’s bark, and on “First Red Rays” the two worlds melt into something that neither band could have made alone.
It’s also the first Neurosis record since Through Silver In Blood not recorded by the late Steve Albini. Scott Evans captured it in Seattle, and the sound is huge but porous, leaving room for Jason Roeder’s drums to echo like distant artillery and for the quiet stretches to feel genuinely hollow. The longer pieces in the second half, stretching past eight and ten minutes, move like tides: out, out, then suddenly crashing back in.
There’s grief all over this record, and anxiety, and anger at a world that seems to be coming apart. But the title isn’t ironic. Somewhere under all the ash is a stubborn tenderness, and by the time the last light fades you feel strangely lighter for having carried the weight.
Best tracks:
Mirror Deep
First Red Rays
Seething and Scattered
In the Waiting Hours
Author’s rating: 9/10
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