TOUR FEATURE: Neurosis

28 July 2014 | 9:57 am | Staff Writer
Originally Appeared In

On the verge of their arrival into Australia, Aaron Osborne caught up with Steve Von Till of Neurosis to discuss the bands near 30 year career and their first tour on our shores starting this week.

After playing music as a unit for nearly 30 years, one would assume there is fairly few new places for a band like Neurosis to play. However, at the time of my conversation with the band’s guitarist and vocalist, Steve Von Till, he and his group of crushing atmospheric-doomy-avant garde-sludgey-metal companions have just ticked two places of the list, and come August, another…Australia.

“We had no idea what to expect going into Croatia and Greece, two places we hadn’t been to before and many of the people in the audience hadn’t had a chance to travel to see us before. It was quite rewarding y’know to be in a new place, have new experiences and meet new people,” Von Till says, speaking to us from his Idaho home in America’s Northwest.

Neurosis are not travel shy, having toured countless times in Europe and America over their near 30 year career, “We’ve been some places a ton, and it’s great because you build friendships and bonds with people there, but it’s nice when the world opens up a little bit, after we’ve been around for this long and that there is still new adventures to be had.”

Coming off the European tour, which for most bands these days includes appearances at larger scale summer festivals, one would assume that for Neurosis this isn’t the most comfortable setting to experience or even perform their music.

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“We definitely feel more comfortable in a club, with our own vibe where we are setting the tone for the whole evening, where in a festival you have control of none of it. We often feel like the freaks in the corner, but y’know over the years where we’ve been around as much as we have, we always see that as an opportunity to kind of throw our stuff out there to the unsuspecting, when there’s a lot of people out there, you never know who might be walking by. Someone might not be looking to like Neurosis, but inside might be looking for something deeper, heavier or stranger than they were there for.”

“Definitely in all our experiences where we have flirted with the bigger environments, whether it’s supporting a bigger act or playing a larger festival, you always seem to grab a couple people that were just random finds, and I think that’s important to be able to keep an ever evolving group of people interested in what you’re doing,” Von Till comments.

With any band that has been performing at a high level for a long time, fans have certain favourite songs and expectations that they would like to see carried out live and Neurosis are no exception. Touring in support of their 2012 release ‘Honor Found in Decay’, the group will always find room for classics in the set, but offer the standpoint, that performing newer material is something necessary for them in order to maintain enthusiasm and keep things interesting for their fans.

“I think really, the response to the new stuff has been great, and anyone that knows us or has been following us knows that we don’t give a shit about what anybody wants to hear and deep down it really is self centred music that we’re playing for our own relief, catharsis and spiritual war against all that is false in this world. One of those false things is people playing songs for other peoples expectations, some people are natural performers and they love doing that, to please the crowd, and that’s what they’re good at, that’s cool, but that’s not where we’re coming from. We are doing this for spiritual release, so we have to play what we feel, or otherwise its complete bullshit.”

As a band that has grown so greatly over the years, Neurosis have been an outfit that despite distance, time, family lives and occupation haven’t slowed down or decided to call it a day just yet – the band still has a lot of life left in them. Throughout the years members have started families, continued careers, performed with other bands and solo projects, and how they create their music together has grown to reflect the changes that time takes on a near 30-year career.

“When we were teenagers, we were just bashing it out in the most primitive style we were capable of on our instruments at that time and I think over time we have just learned to surrender to the flow and get to a more pure space, farther away from the head and the mind and any sort of expectation, and closer to the heart of the matter.”

In terms of the future, Von Till responds to the query of even newer material with, “[Honor in Decay] is still the main focus, but we definitely feel the tension kind of boiling up, where we need to start listening to what these sounds are that are nagging at the back of our minds and to open ourselves up to being able to hear them and channel them, and put them out there.”

With an Australian tour almost at their fingertips, Neurosis are preparing for the journey down under, with the band enthusiastic for what our country has to throw at them.

“ To still have new adventures ahead when we’re almost 30 years in is extremely exciting and you hear about Australia your whole life in the US, through stupid commercial television or movies or you hear weird outback stories from Peter Weir movies like ‘The Last Wave’. Just to be able to get there, see the country, and meet people and just to have done it is really exciting, I’m really looking forward to it.”

If Neurosis’ recorded works and footage of live performance is anything to go by, their shows in Australia should be well received and equally memorable. As a band, Neurosis have accomplished a lot of monumental achievements in their time performing together. For a band that has accomplished so much, still pushing to play in unfamiliar places and striving to evolve their music and their live performance is something very inspiring.

If you’re a fan of their music, you’ll be going anyway, but c’mon, this has been a long time in the making, and they are making the effort to get all the way down here, let’s show them why they shouldn’t wait another 30 years to make the trek back.

Neurosis begin their Australian tour this August. Full dates and details here.