''Through Silver in Blood'' is the fifth album from the American

avant-garde metal Avant-garde metal (also known as avant-metal, experimental metal, and experimental) is a subgenre of heavy metal music loosely defined by use of experimentation and innovative, avant-garde elements, including non-standard and unconventional soun ...

band

Neurosis Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...

. The album was released on April 2, 1996, and was their first record to be released through

Relapse Records Relapse Records is an American independent record label based in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. It was founded by Matthew F. Jacobson in 1990. The label features many grindcore, death metal, metalcore and sludge metal artists. History The label was ...

. The album was reissued in July 2009 on the band's own label,

Neurot Recordings Neurot Recordings is an American independent record label founded by members of avant-garde metal band Neurosis in 1999. Gradually expanding, it has showcased a variety of artists including a number of sludge metal, post-rock, and noise bands. ...

. Since its release, ''Through Silver in Blood'' has been recognized not only as the band's critical and popular peak, but as one of the sources of

post-metal Post-metal is a music genre rooted in heavy metal but exploring approaches beyond metal conventions. It emerged in the 1990s with bands such as Neurosis and Godflesh, who transformed metal texture through experimental composition. In a way simil ...

and as one of the best

metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...

albums of all time. ''Through Silver in Blood'' was preceded by Tribes of Neurot companion album ''Silver Blood Transmission'' (1995) and succeeded by a

split EP A split album (or split) is a music album that includes tracks by two or more separate artists. There are also singles and EPs of the same variety, which are often called "split singles" and "split EPs" respectively. Split albums differ from "var ...

between the two projects, ''

Locust Star ''Locust Star'' is a split album, split EP between Oakland bands Neurosis (band), Neurosis and Tribes of Neurot released in 1996 through Relapse Records as a CD and a Promotional recording, promo. Unlike most split releases, both groups involved ...

'' (1996).

Background and composition

Neurosis bassist and vocalist Dave Edwardson described ''Through Silver in Blood'' as "more of an epic undertaking than the last one." In keeping with the band's progressively deeper experimentation into

extreme metal Extreme metal is a loosely defined umbrella term for a number of related heavy metal music subgenres that have developed since the early 1980s. It has been defined as a "cluster of metal subgenres characterized by sonic, verbal, and visual tran ...

, the album is notably slow, distorted, and heavy, drawing from influences such as

Black Sabbath Black Sabbath were an English rock music, rock band formed in Birmingham in 1968 by guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward (musician), Bill Ward, bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. They are often cited as pioneers of heavy met ...

and

Swans Swans are birds of the family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometim ...

. As the band's first album to feature keyboardist Noah Landis, ''Through Silver in Blood'' marked a new level of darkness in Neurosis's experimentation. During the creation of ''Through Silver in Blood'', the band went through a period of difficulty. Scott Kelly, homeless at the time, was struggling with addiction, and

Steve Von Till Stephen Francis Von Till Jr. is an American musician, poet, and educator, best known as the guitarist of the band Neurosis, in which he also shared lead vocals with former member Scott Kelly. Following Kelly's departure in 2019, he is now the ...

was going through "heavy things". Von Till called the album's creation "a fucking railroad through hell."

Critical reception

''Through Silver in Blood'' has received widespread critical acclaim, with some publications citing it as both one of the first and one of the best

albums.Jim Martin, "Retroaction," ''

Terrorizer Terrorizer is an American grindcore band formed in 1986 in Los Angeles, California. After disbanding, its members gained recognition by playing in influential extreme metal bands, such as Morbid Angel ( David Vincent, Pete Sandoval), Napalm D ...

'' #188, September 2009, p. 80.

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

writer Eduardo Rivadavia gave the album a perfect score, praising the album's challenging and rewarding nature. Writing for ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'', Steve Smith called ''Through Silver in Blood'' Neurosis's "transformative masterpiece: a titanic mix of hardcore, industrial and sludge-metal notions and sampled soundbites, balancing oppressive heaviness, hypnotic repetition and surprising vulnerability." ''

Fact A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scient ...

'' placed the album as number one on their list of best post-metal releases ever, writing, "This is alien, and can be unpleasant, but that’s the point – this is the spiritual successor to ''

'', the album that started it all." ''

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...

'' writer J.J. Anselmi said, "''Through Silver in Blood'' has played an undeniable role in defining post-metal, and its influence reverberates in the sounds of countless bands. But this album inflicts levels of disorientation, fear, and hopelessness that few records have attained in the past 20 years, giving ''Through Silver in Blood'' a shelf life that has yet to glimpse an expiration date." Since its release, ''Through Silver in Blood'' has appeared on several publications' best-of lists.

Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

Personnel adapted from ''Through Silver in Blood'' liner notes. Neurosis * Scott Kelly –

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

– guitar, vocals, percussion * Noah Landis –

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

, sampling * Dave Edwardson –

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, backing vocals *

Jason Roeder Jason Roeder is the drummer of the Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Ar ...

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, percussion * Pete Inc. – visuals Technical personnel * Adam Munoz – engineering assistance * Mike Johnson – engineering assistance * Mike Bogus – engineering assistance * Greg Horn – mastering * Billy Anderson – production Additional musicians * John Goff –

bagpipes Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, No ...

* Martha Burns –

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

* Kris Force –

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Through Silver in Blood 1996 albums Neurosis (band) albums Albums produced by Billy Anderson (producer)