Tomorrow Neurosis release Honor Found in Decay (Neurot), their tenth studio album. It’s been five years since the hugely influential Bay Area-based band put out Given to the Rising, making this the longest gap between releases in their 27-year career. Neurosis recorded it with Steve Albini, sort of a band tradition going back to 1999’s Times of Grace—during their stays in his Chicago studio, Electrical Audio, vocalist and guitarist Scott Kelly often plays shows in town. Alas, Neurosis haven’t followed his example. They aren’t even touring to support the new record—on November 17 they’ll throw a release party in Oakland with Voivod and Yob, but that’s the only stateside date they’ve got on the books. Befitting their venerable status in the metal world (and probably as a direct consequence of the fact that members live in Idaho and Oregon as well as California), Neurosis tend to do “event” shows or big festivals when they play at all.

I’m most definitely not the first to weigh in on Honor Found in Decay—I only just got a promo copy on Friday—but after what I got up to at Saturday’s Halloween party, I’m not about to review another beer this week. (Plus Kelly has been sober for ten or eleven years, so it’d feel somehow disrespectful.) Instead I’ll pile on with some thoughts about Neurosis and my first impressions of the new album.

Philip Montoro

Philip Montoro has been an editorial employee of the Reader since 1996 and its music editor since 2004. Pieces he has edited have appeared in Da Capo’s annual Best Music Writing anthologies in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. He shared two Lisagor Awards in 2019 for a story on gospel pioneer Lou Della Evans-Reid and another in 2021 for Leor Galil's history of Neo, and he’s also split three national awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia: one for multimedia in 2019 for his work on the TRiiBE collaboration the Block Beat, and two (in 2020 and 2022) for editing the music writing of Reader staffer Leor Galil. Philip has played scrap metal in Lozenge, drummed with the Disasters, the Afflictions, and Brilliant Pebbles, and sung for the White Outs. He wrote the column Beer and Metal from 2012 till 2015, and hopes to do so again one day. You can also follow him on Twitter.