One of my first musical memories is my dad telling me about how Dire
Straits were used to test speakers because of the contrast of quiet and loud in
their songs. Like most of the things he told me, I wholeheartedly believed it –
and the juxtaposition of quiet and loud in a song became a deciding criterion
in my judgment of a band’s quality. My pre-teen catalogue of criteria has
widened a bit since then, but the fascination with contrasts in volume has
survived. For that reason, I still have to think of my dad’s speaker testing
story whenever I listen to Neurosis – a band that has perfected the quiet-loud
thing …although I would probably have been scared of them as a kid.
Quiet and loud is, of course, also a central characteristic of their new
album Honor Found in Decay. There are plenty of moments when I turned up
the volume, naively going “Wait. What? What is he whispering? What is that
quiet little melody?” – only to frantically turn it down again when the guitars
go BOOM! out of nowhere causing me to
curse myself for having fallen for it again. I think, though, that this is not
so much about quiet/loud but rather about ugly/beautiful (much like my former
roommate Elliot's photo exhibit “Beautiful/decay” – and I don't think that I
was only making that connection because of the word decay in both titles.
Although Elliot juxtaposed the beauty of nature with the destructive influence
of man, I think that he also found a certain beauty in decay, which also
characterizes my listening experience of this CD). This juxtaposition applies
not only to the music, but also to the lyrics, whose portentous tone reminds me
of the narrator’s voice in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which has a similar biblical, ominous quality. That
book, by the way, also plays with extremes: while it contains some of the most
violent stuff I have read, it’s also beautifully written.
Unlike the path Neurosis had taken with The Eye of Every Storm,
with its overall trippy and actually quite beautiful sound that’s occasionally
interrupted by some aggressive parts, Honor Found in Decay follows its
predecessor Given to the Rising in emphasizing ugliness and
interspersing it with a few moments of relief. Whether they are crushingly loud
or slow and destructive like lava, their apocalyptic blues is quite unnerving
in its relentlessness and the light moments become much needed breathers. My
favorite songs are “At the Well” and “Raise the Dawn.” From the violent and
multilayered culmination of the first into repeated screams of “in the shadow
world” to the latter’s subtle outro with a lamenting violin – Neurosis are
still monumental, ugly, and, well, beautiful all at the same time. These songs
are reminders that in their best moments, Neurosis are in a league of their
own. All we can do is stand in awe and be aware that we are witnessing
something great.
