Neurosis are back.
Release date: March 20, 2026 | Neurot Recordings | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Our world overflows with fear, scorn, and restlessness. Artificially jolted into consciousness, we attempt to control the chaos, clinging to what sense we can until our minds collapse once more. We plunge into private torrents of information, formulated to heighten our distress, pulling us away from the people who live and struggle alongside us. We witness the desecration of truth and harmony at large, intimidating our memories of peace and sowing our hearts with distrust. All while the planet itself becomes increasingly inhospitable. In these senseless times, it is more necessary than ever to remember what makes us human, to embrace our need for belonging and our boundless capacity for empathy, or else the dissonant spiral will continue its cruel arc into the future.
This is just one interpretation of the opening moments of Neurosis’ new album, An Undying Love for a Burning World, which they released unexpectedly on March 20th. This declaration of suffering reflects the band’s obsession with humanity’s animal nature and its dissonance with our artificial lives, an obsession which has lasted over four decades. The band began in the burgeoning crust punk scene of the ‘80s, before a decade of iconic material in the ‘90s which is largely responsible for what we now call post metal. These albums were apocalyptic avalanches of heaviness and atmosphere, utterly drowned in the human capacity to commit and submit to violence. They would later vary on this style, at times embracing passionate melody, all the way through the 2010s. In 2019 the band learned the horrifying reality that founder Scott Kelly had engaged in years of domestic abuse, and so quietly split with him, honoring his family’s wishes for privacy. Kelly would publicly confess this abuse in 2022, putting an end to his artistic career and leaving the wider public in shock. The possibility of future Neurosis material seemed nebulous at most.
Then on the Spring Equinox came the sudden announcement of a new fully-formed Neurosis album, a full decade after their previous effort. This massive surprise was doubled by the news that none other than Aaron Turner had joined the band to replace Kelly on guitar and vocals. Turner’s work in the band Isis is probably the most important evolution of post metal since Neurosis’ classic material, and he has continued to take the genre into unexplored territory on his projects Sumac and Old Man Gloom. As the founder of Hydra Head Records, he has enabled many other such bands to contribute to the genre. He stands taller on the shoulders of Neurosis than anyone else in post metal, and this makes him the ideal fit to enter the band and help heal the legacy that was so formative to his own.
An Undying Love for a Burning World inaugurates Neurosis’ return with a titanic weight and aura that calls back to their most iconic material. At the same time, it hits with immediacy and heart that feel new. After the poetic cries of “We Are Torn Wide Open”, “Mirror Deep” is a whipping, pounding romp. It roars in with squealing electronics and browbeating sludge, and its climax is a riff that could come from a Converge song. Above the turmoil, Steve Von Till gives his signature gritty shouts, Turner presents his frayed howls, and they decry the ephemerality of humanity, its oppression and desperation. To counter the rush, a brooding passage of synth and clean guitar cuts the track in half, making it all the more sinister and mysterious. “Mirror Deep” is a powerful way to announce the album before it continues into its more grandiose heart.
Despite the fevered urgency of the album’s first moments, Neurosis remain capable as ever of developing monumental atmospheres over time. This time, though, they do not spend all their energy accumulating total monoliths of fear, but allow their longer songs to flow through various emotional states. “First Red Rays” and “Blind” run eight and nine minutes respectively, and each have their fair share of terrifying riffs, but also serene peaks of yearning and broad valleys of mournful contemplation. The instruments shift between flurries of rough cuts into tall pillars of stern harmony. Noah Landis’ electronic effects weave alien calls of mystery and chaos into the sound. Lyrics, screamed, shouted, and sung, evoke primal scenes of desperation and death in an indifferent universe. These elements will be familiar to Neurosis fans, but the extended lead melodies and overall calm of these songs is a distinct trace of Turner, whose music has always tended towards large, flowing, contemplative textures. This approach, combined with the rest of the band’s abilities, allows these songs to flourish.
Afterwards come two pieces which introduce a different strain of influence. With similar titles, “Seething and Scattered” and “Untethered” both strike at the divisions that plague our modern zeitgeist, and the technologies that fuel them. They both predominately consist of the same flavor of post metal as the rest of the album, but they dabble in flavors of hard rock and noise rock that Neurosis haven’t tried previously. These moments are ultimately not as graceful as the rest of the songs around them, but they add variety which helps keep the album fresh going into its final leg. The most effective example is on “Seething and Scattered”, when bassist Dave Edwardson takes the mic to rail against the media industry and its polarizing effects. His gruff growls are always take the spotlight when they appear, and their juxtaposition with the simple rock chords make this moment memorable.
The album ends on two enormous works which feature the most complete and harmonious integration of Turner’s melodic stylings. Both deserve discussion, but the more significant is the closer, “Last Light”. It begins with a rapid synthesizer heartbeat, urgent and afraid, over which Turner wails the most visceral lament of human mortality yet. In the song that follows, the band repeats a pattern several times. First, they hone in on crafting a completely new atmosphere in a new style during a verse, then they spiral out into flourishing expanses of instrumental melody. They integrate elements of post metal, post-industrial, and progressive rock, and each is sublime in its own way. Despite going through several bold transitions, the song still flows organically, which is a testament to how unified this new iteration of the band has become.
Neurosis are back. Not only are they back, but they are reborn in a new skin. It reclaims the power of their past music while burning with the bright-eyed vigor of something new. To see this band which has endured so long, and suffered such difficulty, emerge suddenly with such a powerful release is a special thing. At the same time, there was no keeping Neurosis from returning to the studio, and the stage. The band shares on Bandcamp that they require this source of musical expression to stay alive in our world of lunacy, and as long as that lunacy continues, we can assume that need will continue. While there is no simple cure for the endless suffering that echoes throughout the Earth, it is silver linings like these that help give the strength to carry on.
