As many longtime Decibel readers are painfully aware, Neurosis have never been available for our vaunted Hall of Fame series. Oh, they’ve been 100% eligible for it, of course. As one of the most important, boundary-obliterating metallic acts of the past three decades, they clearly deserved multiple inductions based on the impact of indispensable classics like Times of Grace, Through Silver in Blood and Souls at Zero. In fact, I personally spent parts of the last of decade trying to convince the band to make an exception to their longstanding agreement that only guitarists/vocalists Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till would represent the band in interviews. If you know anything about Neurosis, however, it won’t surprise you to learn that their pacts aren’t easily broken. And so, since its 2004 inception, the Decibel Hall of Fame of has remained an incomplete portrait at best.
So, imagine my surprise back in May when Steve causally mentioned via email that he and Scott were, “joking about ‘lifting the veil’ on our past albums in celebration of 30 years and letting everyone be part of interviews to honor the past.”
Always game to have my hopes of a Neurosis Hall of Fame attempt unceremoniously crushed, I pressed on, suggesting that we should induct the three aforementioned Neurosis albums. Steve posited the idea of doing back to back to back HOFs in consecutive issues and I returned volley with the notion of doing all three in one issue, running a Neurosis cover story on the band’s incredible new LP, Fires Within Fires (out in September), and calling it THE FUCKING NEUROSIS ISSUE. We would include interviews with Neurosis collaborators, engineers, session musicians, former live visual artists and—if that weren’t enough—a flexi disc of a previously unreleased 1995 demo of “Locust Star” that somehow actually sounds heavier than the LP version.
My idea won.
It’s safe to say that Decibel wouldn’t be the magazine it is today without Neurosis. And it’s an even better bet that we’ll never do anything like this issue ever again.
Domestic Deluxe (includes flexi disc) and Basic Decibel subscribers can expect to receive the Neurosis Issue within the next two weeks. If you haven’t ponied up for a dB subscription, fear not, we have an EXTREMELY LIMITED number of copies of the issue (which include the Neurosis “Locust Star (1995 demo)” flexi disc) available in our webstore here.
