First Listen CD REVIEW - Neruosis Fires Within Fires

Fires Within Fires

Neurosis

  
   This follow up to Honor Found In Decay once again finds the band peering out through the forest of their own discontent. Throughout their thirty year journey the band has been in a drastic evolution from hardcore to tribal metal. While their last album felt like they took all of the albums from the second half of their career and blended them together with sticks, stones and a short stack of seventies rock classics, this album takes them on a new journey. If everything adding up to this point could be considered breakfast, lunch and supper, Fires within Fires should be the late night fourth meal. Like any Neurosis album you don't merely listen to the album, you must absorb it. Known for their accompanying visuals in regards to cd artwork and sometimes bonus video material, Thomas Hooper's cover art has visualized the duality of darkness and light found on this album.

   Fire is the perfect element to describe this cd. You can often find yourself staring into a flame while it destroys everything outside the blaze. The beautiful glow of the intro to "Blending Light" and the stripped down almost Tom Waits-ish "Broken Ground" surround the crackling heat of "Fire is the End Lesson" like a conical sphere of branches. Feeling very much like a forest tribe sifting through the ashes of its dead, Neurosis are constantly exploring and clearing away the soot hidden in the shadows of their past accolades as a band. This album will leave a mark on you. Be forewarned you might just walk away smelling of smoke and your clothes thick with a layer of auburn dust once you reach the burning embers of this album's closing track "Reach".