Souls at Zero (album)
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| Neurosis studio album | ||||
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Publication |
May 19, 1992 |
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admission |
February to March 1992 |
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| Label (s) |
Alternative Tentacles Neurot Recordings (CD Reissue) |
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Format (s) |
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Title (number) |
8 (MC, LP) |
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running time |
50:50 (MC, LP) |
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| occupation |
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Bill Thompson, Jello Biafra , Neurosis |
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Studio (s) |
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Souls at Zero is the style-defining third studio album by the post-metal band Neurosis . It was published on 19 May 1992 in the mainly on hardcore punk and post-hardcore specialized independent label Alternative Tentacles . The cooperation with the label known for the publication of different and sometimes extraordinary music enlarged and consolidated the audience of the band.
The music on the album is described as a slowly played mixture of noise rock , hardcore punk and doom metal . It is considered a groundbreaking release for the post-metal genre and the first full-fledged album of the style. The texts mostly deal with social isolation, aggression and feelings of depression.
history
prehistory
Neurosis' first albums were considered a hybrid of Thrash Metal and post-hardcore . The singing was compared with that of the Slayer singer Tom Araya . The first idea for a changed basic conception of their own style arose during the tour of the previous album The Word as Law, which was more based on Thrash Metal . The musicians were dissatisfied with the album and were interested in new methods to expand their soundscape. The musicians were particularly interested in sound effects , samples and instruments that were unorthodox for hardcore and metal at the time, after they discovered that they could not produce the desired sound with a classically cast rock band . The idea of adding samples and keyboards to the music went back to working with throbbing gristle and coil . As a result of the decision to include new elements in the music, Neurosis was looking for a complementary musician who could use a sampler , an instrument that was previously only rarely used in metal and hardcore. In the Dark Wave -Interessierten Simon McIlroy , the group found the musicians wanted. Although he had no previous active experience in metal or hardcore bands, Neurosis took him on as a full member. The newly formed band made use of common musical preferences, especially Joy Division , to develop new forms of musical expression together. Scott Kelly describes the writing process for Souls at Zero as an ongoing experiment. Meanwhile, the band had only vague ideas about their intended sound. According to Kelly, it was unclear to the musicians whether the group's vaguely conceived goal was achievable. Nevertheless, he calls the phase a first step towards a lasting sound of your own. According to Steve von Till , the band was in an extremely productive phase. The musicians had gained enough experience and equipment to arrange new songs more experimentally than before. The equipment that Neurosis used for this purpose included the band's amplifiers, with which they intuitively experimented in the studio and during rehearsals in order to reinforce the meditative impression. Von Till speaks of a gut feeling as well as an instinctive and experimental handling of the equipment that has become familiar over the previous tour.
Despite the penchant for experimentation, the pieces were not created exclusively in jam sessions . Many of the elements of the pieces that were later put together were composed beforehand by the individual musicians and brought together in rehearsals. According to Kelly, nothing about this form of music writing has changed since then. Despite being called “hard work”, the group has stuck to this spelling ever since.
“Our maxim is that everyone in the band has to be 100% satisfied with a passage before it is released. So the biggest compromise is the time factor, as a lot of things have to be changed and developed before everyone is happy with it. "
Kelly described the period of the album's creation as a personally uncompromising and self-destructive phase of life, which, however, was accompanied by a particularly creative period in the group. During the period in which Souls at Zero and the following albums were created, including Through Silver in Blood, the musicians had n't given any thought to the future and only dedicated themselves to music.
admission
For the album recordings, the band booked the Starlight Sound Studios in Richmond , California , where the rapper's debut 2Pac 2Pacalypse Now and the first albums of the death metal band Autopsy , Severed Survival and Mental Funeral were recorded. As the first sound engineer, the studio employee Bill Thompson got involved. In order to expand the sound by incorporating an instrumentation that was untypical for the band at that time, the members of the group looked for potential accompanying musicians among their circle of friends. In addition to high school acquaintances such as the flautist Sarah Augros, Kris Force, who later became known with Amber Asylum , played on Souls at Zero . Kelly described the first studio collaboration with the rock musicians as uncomplicated and pragmatic. Since the Neurosis musicians had no experience with wind and string instruments , they invited the musicians as far as possible without any guidelines. Previously, they were only given raw demo recordings , to which they were supposed to play passages on their instruments in the studio.
After the band had satisfactorily recorded all of the planned material within two days, they finished other, unfinished pieces in the rehearsal room and recorded them as part of the album. After the recordings, however, the musicians and studio staff failed because of the mixing . For support, they asked the label owner Jello Biafra, who is experienced in the use of studio technology, as an additional sound engineer. Biafra was responsible for the final mix. Kelly later emphasized that due to the economic tensions with Alternative Tentacles , he would prefer not to include Biafra in the booklet. However, he would have to admit that he would recognize his contribution to the publication as "good work". The legal battle led with Alternative Tentacles was for a $ 3,000 royalty for the Souls at Zero and Enemy of the Sun albums , which Kelly said Biafra had withheld. Kelly said Biafra had manipulated the label's bookkeeping to the detriment of the band. In this context he spoke of a breach of trust.
Publications
The album was released on May 19, 1992 on Alternative Tentacles on cassette, CD and LP and in the same year on Toy's Factory for the Japanese market as a double LP. After a long conflict over the correct payment of the artist's shares in the Souls at Zero and Enemy of the Sun albums, Neurosis fought for the publishing rights to both albums and had the album reissued by various companies. Both albums relocated to Alternative Tentacles were released in 1997 as a double album via Iron City Records . In the years 2000 and 2011, Neurosis created further re-releases with slightly different designs and an addition of three additional tracks on the band's own label Neurot Recordings . In 2014 they had Relapse Records re-released the last version released on Neurot .
trip
Steve von Till described the subsequent tour in 1992 as a learning phase for the band. The musicians were too technically oriented and too controlled to be able to transfer the mind-expanding aspect of the music to the audience. Only after they had given up the attempt and let the music play , the mood was carried over to the audience. After the band broke away from the claim of playful perfectionism, according to von Till the musicians could lose themselves in the game of "hypnotic, extremely hard and loud music", whereupon the band realized that they were getting closer to their musical ideas and continued on this path wanted to pursue. The goal from then on was to play deeper, more emotional and more elementary music. Neurosis projected images from “an old slide projector through a bicycle rim covered with colored film ” to support their performances . According to Melanie Schmidt, the performance of the album forms a vortex of emotions when the band performs, especially through the "use of disturbing projections". Steve von Till explained that Neurosis wanted to use the visual effects to make the different clubs, each with their own atmosphere, a place for the band and the music they played.
style
| Track list | |
| LP / MC | CD / LP double album |
A side
B side
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Music and concept
According to Steve von Till, the basic musical concept of the album was borrowed from psychology , in particular from Freudian psychoanalysis . According to von Till, Souls at Zero was the first attempt to confront the recipients with archetypes in quick succession in order to bring about a mental opening. Archetypes describe archetypes of human imagination that are located in the collective subconscious. Von Till added in a further statement on the album that this concept of archetypes was also inspired by Throbbing Gristle's idea of using subliminal perceptible frequencies to generate emotions.
For Souls at Zero , the musicians worked for the first time with string and woodwind instruments as well as with film samples. The juxtaposition of sound fragments from the National Socialist propaganda film Triumph des Willens on the one hand and the science fiction film Star Wars on the other corresponded to the endeavor to confront the listener with archetypes defined by Carl Gustav Jung . According to Jung, the confrontation and preoccupation with such archetypes should help to achieve better self-awareness as well as uncover and resolve ego disorders. Neurosis confront the listener in sampling, dynamics and instrumentation with absolute and ideal ideas of good and bad in a rapid change which, according to von Till, should lead to overcoming these ideas.
In addition, based on developments in hip-hop , the band used in particular the publications of Dr. Dre , sampling as a cacophonic rhythm. Using Dr. According to Dre, Kelly was unique at the time. In particular, the arrangements and the tension created were groundbreaking for Neurosis.
According to Garry Sharpe-Young , style fragments from grunge , gothic rock and metal flowed into the musical concept. According to Daniel Buszpan, Neurosis also recorded elements of industrial as well as folk instruments and rhythms for the first time . In the reviews of the album, this changed rhythm in particular is assigned a dynamic that stands out and is groundbreaking for post-metal. Another important aspect of the album is mentioned by some reviewers as the polyphonic singing, which has more of the effect of a collective than of different individual musicians. From another side, however, Scott Kelly's singing between "plead, scream and whimper" is highlighted as outstanding. The guitar playing on Souls at Zero is perceived as particularly hard and described as "noisy guitar walls". Despite the heaviness of the album, which is often emphasized, the band operates with a constant change between loud and quiet passages. Neurosis understand how to “ build sudden pauses in their end time music”. Such "waiting passages" made the " noisy thunderstorms appear even more apocalyptic."
Texts
The lyrics were written by Scott Kelly. Critics describe the content as indistinct and increasingly call the texts cryptic and nebulous. However, social isolation , aggression and the feeling of depression could be identified as core issues. Scott Kelly himself ascribed a catharsic function to the lyrics and the music in a difficult phase for him. According to his own statement, he suffered from an emotional low phase during the creation process of the album, which had an impact on the creation of the album.
According to reviewers, the album addresses a spiritual search and self-discovery . Kelly confirmed the aspect of self-discovery and explained that the members of the group were still themselves in a process of self-discovery. Von Till, on the other hand, referred to the use of archetypes and the effort to influence the recipients with the music.
The opening piece To Crawl Under One's Skin begins with a warning spoken passage, which prepares the listener for a mythical journey into one's own self , in which inner conflicts will arise. The following texts have been interpreted as the suffering of a person during such a spiritual search for whom the world offers no purpose. Neurosis presents a "spiritually empty world that is drowning in war and materialism." The lyrics are an expression of a rebellion against the modern world and the search for purity. A Chronology for Survival stands in this context as a call to persevere against modern society. The final piece Takeahnase , rated as a summary, intones with another warning speech sequence that was compared to a shaman's speech:
“We are facing a dangerous period ahead. If we do not stop and correct some of these wrong doings now we are all going to suffer. Either things that we made will take us or nature will take over… Earthquakes, floods, rains, sever droughts, sever winters, lightening destructive, great winds destructive… These things will warn us that we are not following the law of the Great Spirit. ”
“We are facing a dangerous time. If we don't stop and correct some of these wrong actions now, we will all suffer. Either the things we did become doomed or nature takes over ... earthquakes, floods, rains, severe droughts, severe winters, destructive lightning and winds ... These things will warn us that we are not following the law of the Great Spirit. "
The word Takeahnase was coined by Kelly, supposedly a synonym for an apocalypse, and sung in the song like a tribal chant. In its apocalyptic use it corresponds to the previous warnings about a spiritual and humane catastrophe, which is caused by a "combination of capitalism and spiritually bankrupt Christianity."
layout
A photograph of a burning straw doll was chosen as the central motif of the album design. The figure was photographed from a frog's perspective against a bright blue sky, whereby the figure, oversized and almost completely black, stands out from the blue sky. Clear flames can be seen at the foot of the figure. The picture is framed in a circle by a black and gray ouroboros . The surrounding background of the cover is uniformly black, only the lettering stands out in large white letters. The name of the band was printed above, while the title of the album was printed below the photograph. The idea for the burning straw figure is borrowed from the film Wicker Man . Von Till stated that he was “obsessed” with this film at the time the album was created. In addition, the film would correspond to the trance-like archaic idea of the music played by Neurosis on Souls at Zero . Originally, the band wanted to use a still image from the film as the central motif of the illustration. However, the idea was discarded due to high royalty demands from the film's production company. So Till, McIlroy and Kendall built a similar looking figure together with some friends and photographed it while they burned it down.
The cover was digitally revised for the re-release in 2000. The blue background color of the photo has been replaced by a strong yellow. The contours of the Ouroboros as well as the band lettering have been updated and, in keeping with the band's visual concept, set in brittle silver.
The back of the album is decorated with a red, wheel-like circular shape collaged from tree elements on a black background. The motif of the wheel , the ouroboros as well as the element of collaged trees without inner color gradations has since been used several times for the design of the following publications by the band.
reception
According to Sharpe-Young, the album disturbed and overwhelmed most of the critics after its release. For Allmusic , Ned Raggett described the album as "too often too much of a good thing". Nevertheless, he highlighted the selection and use of the samples as an obscure but intelligent idea. Michael Rensen called the album in his review for the metal magazine Rock Hard an "extremely weird mix" and abstained from rating.
Retrospectively, Souls at Zero marks an important development step in the band's career, which with this album turned from early hardcore punk to avant-garde post-metal. Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell attach greater importance to the album and describe it as an important step in the progressive development of Hardcore Punk and Heavy Metal , which expanded the possibilities of expression in both styles. Neurosis is attributed a pioneer status for post-metal due to the albums Souls at Zero and Enemy of the Sun. Joachim Hiller from Ox-Fanzine describes the two releases from 1992 and 1993 as “the high point of their work” with regard to the entire work of the band. In a retrospective review for Visions, Melanie Schmidt ascribes an "exceptional position" to the album , which occasionally established the band's " cult status ". In January 2000, Souls at Zero was included in Visions with one of the 100 most important records of the nineties . Lars Brinkmann also emphasizes the importance of Souls at Zero for post-metal and related music areas for Spex magazine .
“Recorded in distant San Francisco by sun-drenched colleagues Neurosis, this album concentrated everything that hundreds of bands needed over the next 15 years to be able to rub themselves sore at the intersections of metal / hardcore and noise / rock. Nevertheless, until today no band has managed to unleash such violent hurricanes in suffering and to shake both music halls and occupied houses with indulgent pathos. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eduardo Rivadavia: Neurosis: Pain of Mind. allmusic, accessed April 19, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k invisibleoranges: neurosis Souls at Zero a retrospective. invisibleoranges.com, accessed September 4, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Adam Wills: Scott Kelly of Neurosis. Hellbound, accessed September 4, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d e Trevor de Brauw: Interview with Steve von Till. Self-titledMag, accessed September 4, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Andreas Reissnauer: Neurosis Interview 07/2004. EMP, accessed September 7, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c Interview with Neurosis' Scott Kelly. Long Gone Loser, accessed September 10, 2015 .
- ^ Jamie Thomson: Neurosis Live at the Roadburn. The Guardian, accessed November 26, 2015 .
- ^ A b Joachim Hiller: Enemy of the Sun. Ox fanzine, accessed April 22, 2014 .
- ↑ a b Melanie Schmidt: Souls at Zero. Visons, accessed November 26, 2015 .
- ^ Heinrich H. Balmer: The Archetype Theory of CG Jung: A Critique . Springer, Berlin - Heidelberg 1972, ISBN 978-3-540-05787-1 , pp. 87 ff .
- ^ A b c Garry Sharpe-Young: New Wave of American Heavy Metal . Zonda Books Limited, New Plymouth 2005, ISBN 0-9582684-0-1 , pp. 222 .
- ^ Heinrich H. Balmer: The Archetype Theory of CG Jung: A Critique . Springer, Berlin - Heidelberg 1972, ISBN 978-3-540-05787-1 , pp. 43 ff .
- ↑ Daniel Bukszpan: The Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal . Sterling, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4027-9230-4 , pp. 171 .
- ↑ a b c Hendrik Kramer: Souls at Zero. Power Metal, accessed November 26, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Dan fruits War: Souls at Zero. (No longer available online.) Your Last Rites, archived from the original on September 30, 2016 ; accessed on May 2, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c lechuck: Souls at Zero. Bloodchamber, accessed November 26, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Ned Raggett: Souls at Zero. allmusic, accessed November 26, 2015 .
- ^ A b Laina Dawes: Souls at Zero. Exclaim, accessed November 26, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d e Recluse: The Neurosis Mysteries Part I. VISUP, accessed April 25, 2017 .
- ↑ See e.g. B. Sovereign, Through Silver in Blood, A Sun That Never Sets
- ↑ Michael Rensen: Neurosis: Souls at Zero. Rock Hard, accessed August 18, 2016 .
- ↑ Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell: Beyond and Before: Progressive Rock since the 1960s . Continuum International, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-8264-2332-0 , pp. 261 .
- ↑ Joachim Hiller: Souls at Zero / Enemy of the Sun. Ox fanzine, accessed April 22, 2014 .
- ^ Lars Brinkmann: Year of No Light North. Spex, archived from the original on April 27, 2014 ; Retrieved April 26, 2014 .
