Style: Post-hardcore, ambient, post-metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: A slow and deliberate bludgeoning with heavy guitars and obscure atmospheres
Thoughts: Time is a strange thing. It can distort memories and thoughts, it can change you, and it can make you forget. Time is a healer, time is a murderer, time is time and we as mortals have nothing we can do against it. It is the great equalizer, we will all be born and we will all end up in the grave. Time does not care, it does not judge, all are equal before time.
Time can also change views, as is the case with Neurosis' Given to the Rising. When I first heard this album I did not like it. I thought it was a big step down from their previous releases, and their post-hardcore tribal sound was starting to get a bit old with me. But that was nearly 20 years ago, and this is now.
Given to the Rising is the quintessential Neurosis album. It has everything that a fan of the band would want: huge, larger than life riffs, ambient sections that are both calming and disconcerting at the same time, tribal drumming from Noah, and dynamics like only Neurosis can create. It's not my favorite album of theirs by any means, but it certainly is better than I remembered it when it first came out. There is no other band creating music like this, so the fact that this is par for the course for Neurosis still puts it miles ahead of the average metal or hardcore band.
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