Late last month, post-metal titans Neurosis released their 10th studio album, Honor Found in Decay, on their own imprint, Neurot Recordings, to great critical acclaim. As Neurosis have developed from genre-defining iconoclasts to underground monoliths in their own right, they have become steadily more reclusive, making fewer and fewer live appearances. Vocalist and guitarist Steve Von Till explains that becoming more reclusive was a necessary step towards creating a balance between Neurosis and the other aspects of the band members' lives.
"Finding balance in our lives was so necessary because I think this music is intense enough that if we put poison into the well, then it would have ground us up and spit us up the other side," Von Till tells Exclaim! "I mean, life is complicated, and we all have jobs and families and kids, but we'll always have this, we'll always be able to come together for this self-expression to help us find balance with everything. At the same time, we realize as well that we can't have the band be everything, that too has to be in balance."
Von Till also identified this crucial balance as a part of what has kept the core of Neurosis so strong, with a static lineup for the vast majority of the band's venerable 27-year career.
"Once we dedicated ourselves to this music and realized it was something special, we were not going to walk away," he says. "Not that we haven't had our moments together, touring all over the world in vans, playing in shit holes and all of that, and all those trials and tribulations and periods of loving and hating each other."
Von Till refers to the relationship with his bandmates as "brothers in the true functional and dysfunctional family view of it," and notes that touring both helps keep those relationships possible and aids with their creativity. "I think the creativity would be there either way, but we're just keeping the purity."
Despite their increasingly reclusive nature, Neurosis will embark on a rare series of performance dates to support Honor Found in Decay. So, while Von Till says that while the band will not be touring "in the traditional, get-in-the-bus sense," they will be playing a few forthcoming dates in the United States and the UK.
"Then," he says, "we do have plans to get to at least some of the major cities we like to go to — I'm talking fly-in situations, Saturday nights — trying to hit Chicago, New York, Atlanta between now and March. We're hoping to hit each region of the states for a show or two, then we'll be in Europe for two weeks next summer, which for us is a long time."
So far, Neurosis only have a small handful of dates lined up, but no shows are scheduled for Canada.
For now, check out all the group's upcoming stops here and read our full interview with Neurosis here.
"Finding balance in our lives was so necessary because I think this music is intense enough that if we put poison into the well, then it would have ground us up and spit us up the other side," Von Till tells Exclaim! "I mean, life is complicated, and we all have jobs and families and kids, but we'll always have this, we'll always be able to come together for this self-expression to help us find balance with everything. At the same time, we realize as well that we can't have the band be everything, that too has to be in balance."
Von Till also identified this crucial balance as a part of what has kept the core of Neurosis so strong, with a static lineup for the vast majority of the band's venerable 27-year career.
"Once we dedicated ourselves to this music and realized it was something special, we were not going to walk away," he says. "Not that we haven't had our moments together, touring all over the world in vans, playing in shit holes and all of that, and all those trials and tribulations and periods of loving and hating each other."
Von Till refers to the relationship with his bandmates as "brothers in the true functional and dysfunctional family view of it," and notes that touring both helps keep those relationships possible and aids with their creativity. "I think the creativity would be there either way, but we're just keeping the purity."
Despite their increasingly reclusive nature, Neurosis will embark on a rare series of performance dates to support Honor Found in Decay. So, while Von Till says that while the band will not be touring "in the traditional, get-in-the-bus sense," they will be playing a few forthcoming dates in the United States and the UK.
"Then," he says, "we do have plans to get to at least some of the major cities we like to go to — I'm talking fly-in situations, Saturday nights — trying to hit Chicago, New York, Atlanta between now and March. We're hoping to hit each region of the states for a show or two, then we'll be in Europe for two weeks next summer, which for us is a long time."
So far, Neurosis only have a small handful of dates lined up, but no shows are scheduled for Canada.
For now, check out all the group's upcoming stops here and read our full interview with Neurosis here.
