Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Neurosis - Enemy of the Sun (1993)

Finally getting to grips with Through Silver In Blood and me literally focusing only on that one Neurosis release, revisiting it intermittently over several months if not years overall, was a rewarding experience in the long run.  However, it set the bar high for my expectations of the rest of the discography that I was destined to sample thereafter.  Enemy of the Sun found itself in my sights earlier on in 2022 and as with its successor, I have taken several months to listen to it.  Sometimes in one sitting and more often than not over two halves - both methods being rewarding in some way, shape or form.  Of course, I came at EoS from a different angle altogether than I did TSiB, having gotten over my challenges with the sound of the band I could focus instead on the immediate content in front of me.

This time around, tracks started to resonate with me much more easily, both in terms of memorability and an overall appreciation of the complex and convoluted structures that jarred their way into my head from the off.  The middle-eastern warble on Raze the Stray, for example, instantly struck a chord in me as it reflected perfectly the overall experimental direction of the album.  I find the colliding structure of Lexicon as abrasive as you would expect, but at the same time cannot fail to acknowledge the emotional turmoil that holds the chaos together so cohesively.  The horns and strings of penultimate track The Time of the Beasts show a balance of ambition, of musical exploration that still embraces the raw and now familiar to me elements of the bands core sound.  The samples that lie interspersed throughout the record are a part of the narrative that serve to elevate the turgid trajectory of the songwriting perfectly.

I think the main success of Neurosis is that they play music that appeals to me on a personal level.  That is not to say that I share (or that I can even accurately interpret) every experience they share with me on EoS or any other releases for that matter, but that the music sounds authentic and organic, from the heart.  Aside from the fact that it is well played, this music is simply an ugly truth that is shared without being forced - notwithstanding that it is not necessarily comfortable to perform.  Closing track Cleanse is probably one of my favourite tracks from the whole release.  Stripped back to a tribal but not primitive or simplistic structure this just feels so earthy and I can smell fresh air, sense humidity in the atmosphere and threat in the aether also.  It is a bold way to close an album most certainly, but it is done with a confidence that grows over the entire fifteen minutes and fifty-three seconds of its runtime.