SilentScream213 This is going to come off as harsh and opinionated, but the fact of the matter is, bagpipes are one of the ugliest instruments out there. They are piercing and shrill, they have almost no vibrato resulting in a stagnant, unrelenting cry, and they’re prone to staggering off key in between notes. It’s very difficult to properly fit them into a song, and are usually only used in contemporary music as a quick way to make something sound “Scottish” or folky.

I think it’s only fitting, then, that Neurosis of all bands would be the ones to utilize this instrument to its full potential. Neurosis are no strangers to making ugly music, as it’s pretty much their MO. Still, I was blown away by the utilization of bagpipes in “The Last You’ll Know.” The instrument provides the lead melody in what could only be called the apex of the song, or album even. The bagpipes play shrill, sustained notes over doomy guitar, and with pristine efficiency, convey this sombre, painful emotion that evokes a person at their limit, threatening to break. The ugly, static, unrelenting, barely-staying-on-note shrieks of the bagpipes are absolutely perfect for evoking this. It works wonders with the sludgy yet fragile atmosphere the band builds here, it doesn’t sound gimmicky or Scottish, it just perfectly encapsulates a harrowing yet still passionate cry of human emotion. It is, quite plainly, one of the greatest moments in music I have heard.

…What about the rest of the album? Right… it’s good. Not all that memorable. The majority of this album is Neurosis plodding along with chords that don’t evoke much and adding some effects and atmospherics that only provide surface level complexity to the album. Most of it is not very successful in building any mood outside of the generic trademark Sludge “miserable.” There are a few moments such as above where the band really captures something special, but most of them are hidden between long stretches of nothing.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the album Grace. Most should know the lore; Grace is a Dark Ambient album made by Neurosis side project Tribes of Neurot as a companion album meant to be listened to simultaneously with this album. On its own, well, it’s just a pretty minimalistic Dark Ambient album with samples, droning, and Noise. Doesn’t make for great individual listening.

But, how do they stack up as a duo? Grace adds some pleasant layering, density, and connectivity to the album. It truly makes it feel like one continuous experience, and it does feel like it’s how the album was meant to be listened to. And good god, remember that aforementioned moment with the bagpipe leads on “The Last You’ll Know”? Ambient pads backing that moment in perfect harmony just elevate it into an even more unbearably bittersweet moment of pure miserable catharsis. Unbelievable…

But does it do enough to elevate the whole album to its commonly held masterpiece status? To me, no. It definitely improves the album, but using numeric terms, probably by about a quarter star, 10 percent, etc. Grace is too minimalistic and lacks any standout moments of its own to do much more than just slightly improve the album. Given the choice, I would always listen to them as a set, it's definitely the superior experience, but it’s not as “transcendental” as some would have you believe. Mostly just a small bonus. I applaud the creativity, but at the same time, could have just released it as one album…

Either way, I’m not rating the duo here, because that’s not what this is. And after having listened to the two together, it does highlight a bit the “empty” parts of this album, where there’s really not much going on. Without a denser, more evocative atmosphere, the weak riffs and simple rhythm section isn’t doing enough to really carry this.

And so, I’ll stand by what I said before. It’s an album with some incredible moments, but they do get a bit lost in a fire of “just good” Atmosludge. Not the magnum opus of the genre it is often hailed as.

Warthur Although it can be enhanced by listening in synch with the Tribes of Neurot album "Grace", even by itself Times of Grace is still an extremely solid followup to Through Silver In Blood which builds on the atmospheric sludge metal sound of that album impressively. The title track's titanic closing riffs melting away to reveal the plaintive brass instrumentation of album closer The Road to Sovereignty is a particular revelation. Between this and its predecessor, I would actually give this one the edge and say that it's the best release since the magnificent, genre-defining Souls At Zero. (Those especially keen to try the "Grace" experiment may want to bear in mind that a compilation of both albums was issued for your ease of buying.)

Vim Fuego The gentle Eastern flavoured bleeps and chords of "Suspended In Light" cannot prepare the unwary listener for the next harrowing 64 minutes of their life.

All of a sudden, the gentle sounds are gone, and a veritable rockfall of hulking, scathing guitars are crashing around you, scraping the skin from the inside of your ear canals. Acidic voices screech from the hellish Golgotha emanating from the speakers. There is little respite. There is no let up. Track after bludgeoning track smashes against the bulkhead of your sanity, or trickles delicately across your subconscious. Welcome to the psychosis of Neurosis.

Neurosis don't create songs as such, but geological epochs of immense sound, bordering on noise, but held on the teetering balance between control and chaos. You don't so much listen to this album as you do absorb it. Distortion drips from everything, like water dripping from the walls of a darkened cave. It is dark, brooding, and brutal, but doesn't sound anything like death metal or black metal. This transcends categorisation. There is layer upon layer of sound in a complex laminate, which at times could be random, because it meshes too perfectly to possibly be created by human hands.

Many questions are posed, only a few are answered. How are these sounds being made? Why are they so loud? Why is there such a compulsion to keep listening? Why doesn't this get boring? Why didn't I listen to this years ago? Why doesn't this sell millions?

Forget artificial stimulants that need to be inhaled, ingested or injected. 'Times Of Grace' will induce a perfectly safe, perfectly legal altered state of consciousness.

siLLy puPPy After releasing their landmark “Through Silver In Blood,” NEUROSIS was a much better known act after touring with Pantera and continuing their mind blowing pioneering efforts in the world of post metal and sludge. The temptation to create a sequel to “Silver” had to have been intense but once again NEUROSIS proved that you can continuously move on into new musical territories and create something new out of the old. Such is the case with their sixth full album TIMES OF GRACE. Although this is clearly endowed with much of the sludgery of the past, it is a clear attempt to mellow things down a bit. In fact all throughout the 90s NEUROSIS was also producing ambient music under the name Tribes Of Neurot, which included all the band members and other musicians not in NEUROSIS and the band had always added some of their ambient electronic wizardry to their metal releases but on this album they add even more and this album was actually designed to be heard side by side with the “Grace” album by their Tribes Of Neurot project.

TIMES OF GRACE delivers much more of a post-rock feel than a sludge assault and although there are still remnants of the frenetic tribal drumming on the “Under The Surface,” we get a much calmer and simplified drumming style on this album reminding me more of bands like Isis or Pelican. The intro track “Suspended In Light” is a full-on ambient number and the electronic background soundscapes continue throughout the entire run. The guitars seem to me to sound more like grunge at times. By the time we get to some of the later tracks like “Away” it sounds like the album totally morphed into the post-rock world with little metal at all being heard. The slow recurring clean guitar sounds with the slow hypnotic drumming and mournful violins sound more like A Silver Mt Zion release than the NEUROSIS of yesteryear.

The result of this toning down meant that this album took longer to grow on me than the preceding ones that immediately blow the roof off the house. The rewards are more subtle and require patience. I have only started to warm up to this album lately. It has always been one of my lesser favorites of their outstanding output. One of the things i really love about NEUROSIS has been the frenetic drumming and pummeling sludgery so i had to learn how to appreciate this one on a whole different level. That i have learned how to do but despite warming up to this release i still like it less than most others. NEUROSIS have always been pioneers with their bold experimentation but here they don’t seem to really add anything new to these particular sounds, they just mix it up a bit. That is fine and dandy and it really is good for what it is but they spoiled me and i was expecting more. Luckily this was just a rest stop on the musical highway and other than on the EP “Sovereign” they would move on to new musical pastures.

bartosso Graceful & painful

My adventure with Neurosis had some of the most difficult beginnings of all my difficult beginnings. While not the heaviest band in the world, there is something about Neurosis that makes them one of the least welcoming. Where there's a will there's a way, though. A way to appreciate something as abrasive and heavy as this music can be at its darkest. And yet, despite the doom and gloom, the creativity, subtle lyricism and emotional charge that flow through this music make of it an experience bordering on synesthesia.

The sixth album by Neurosis continues the post-sludge journey started in Souls At Zero and greatly developed on Through Silver In Blood. And as with any journey, no stage is exactly the same. Times Of Grace demands lots of focus, although not as much as its predecessor. Whereas TSIB was a bleak, hypnotizing colossus of industrial sludge, tinged with an ominous tribal feel, Times of Grace is a record pervaded with austere, cinematic, somewhat primordial atmosphere (perfectly mirrored by the cover art). Songwriting seems to be tighter, more focused on pace changes and rhythm experimentation at the cost of long atmospheric build-ups. I can safely say that despite both albums being more or less on a par in my book, Times Of Grace is more complex and more daring in terms of composition. Not as unrelenting and less groundbreaking than TSIB was at the time of release, it's an album that takes all previously used non-metal elements and brings them to a new level. It's the path that will eventually lead the band to their most post and least metal record, The Eye Of Every Storm.

Times Of Grace is one of the two most acclaimed albums by Neurosis and for a good reason. It's a great successor to the brilliant TSIB and another milestone in the evolution of post-metal. It's a must for all fans of experimental music, especially those who are into atmospheric sludge in the vein of Isis or Cult of Luna, who, by the way, both took inspiration from Neurosis in the first place.

Phonebook Eater 8/10

"Times Of Grace" is the most spiritual, mystical, but also the most abrasive Neurosis album yet.

"Times Of Grace" is the fourth album of seminal Sludge Metal band Neurosis, the follow up to the masterpiece of theirs and even of the genre as a whole, "Through Silver In Blood". It is quite hard after such a release to keep the expectations as high. But "Times Of Grace", even though it is not as good, is a fantastically executed release, that many people controversially consider their ultimate masterpiece, but I do see why some would love this album as much as these fans do.

Abandoning the huge, smothered reverb of "Silver In Blood", ToG has a much more rough, distorted, sludgy sound, but also more straightforward and maybe not quite as ambitious. The result of this is a claustrophobic sound that is just as scary as the previous album. But the experimentation is very present, with again some unusual instruments for metal here and there, as well as some strange sound effects that accompany the songs, most of them unrecognizable samples. Guitar effects also abound quite a bit, but in a much different way from TSiB.

I've always noticed in Neurosis's music this distorted, almost spiritual feel that makes the band so special sounding; starting from "Souls At Zero", the band always were writing music as it seemed like it was intended to be the soundtrack of a shamanic ritual of native people from South America or something. A very primitive and visceral feel is always felt in their music, but I do think this album in particular is somewhat more spiritual and mystic."Times Of Grace", because of its sound, is an immensely proud album, that always keeps heads up. however, it has its humble moments,meaning moments of shattered beauty, that surprise the listener very much. But these calmer moments are really dreadful and dramatic sounding, in a good way; the vocals of Scott Kelly, are and have always been full of pain, and on this album he proves it like he never did before. The album is quite solid, the more straight-forward structure of the tracks make this characteristic very easy to detect; there are definitely less-build ups, thus most of the time they start fierce and go straight to the point, but of course exceptions are always made. This album remains quite atmospheric because of the experimentation surrounding it and the always used repetition, and so Atmospheric Sludge Metal once again is a great and accurate way to define Neurosis's music.

The songs for me are almost always great, starting from "The Doorway", probably the most intense and abrasive song here. "The Last You'll Know" might be my favorite of the album, its also the most epic track here, and quite possibly the most beautiful too, while "Belief" is the essence of Sludge Metal and the most atmospheric track, and "Away" is comparable to "Strength Of Fates" from their previous album, being a huge build up to a quite intense piece that takes place only in the last few minutes. The title track is also a powerful and crunchy song that is worth mentioning. Even the interludes are very well done, and should not be underrated; they're always somewhat hypnotic, and very interesting in their nature.

A splendid release, something that is essential to listen to if you're into Sludge Metal. One of Neurosis' most personal albums, full of character and spirit, and that sometimes all you need for an album to work.