Steve Von Till says Neurosis only committed to returning after being asked to headline a youth suicide prevention festival in Montana.
Neurosis had written most of an album and still had not decided whether to be Neurosis again. One conversation settled it, and they were in a studio within 24 hours.
Speaking to “The Vinyl Guide” podcast, Steve Von Till described a band that spent years unsure whether it had a future at all, and a request that gave it one.
The four remaining members, Von Till, drummer Jason Roeder, bassist Dave Edwardson and keyboardist Noah Landis, first met up at the end of 2024 with no fixed plan.
“We walked away from it in pretty uncertain circumstances seven years ago and weren’t quite sure if, how, and why to make a return. We definitely had to walk away and get some perspective. And we had gotten together at the end of 2024, just the four remaining members, to put our feet in the water. We missed each other. We missed making sounds. As soon as we were in a room together with amps firing and the drums going, it just started happening instantly. So we knew that we had to do something. And early the following year, we had asked Aaron Turner, longtime friend, a great artist in his own right. We just had a feeling that he was the guy that was gonna help us complete the puzzle and bring the energy and the assistance in reinventing ourselves without having to explain where we were coming from or anything like that. He just inherently knew. And so once he was in, the songs started coming quite quickly, but still we were kind of — I don’t know — still grasping at the when and the why, to make specific plans,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
The uncertainty was not only about logistics. Co-founder Scott Kelly left the band in 2019, a departure kept private at the request of his family. In 2022 he publicly acknowledged emotional, financial, verbal and physical abuse of his wife and children, and retired from music.
“Once we were actually making the music and we brought Aaron in, we actually knew it was going to be Neurosis. Before that, we were, like, ‘I don’t know.’ We didn’t know if maybe our legacy had been tarnished beyond repair. It was just a heartbreaking situation we were coming out with, and embarrassing and humiliating and all those other types of things. And it did give us an opportunity, I think, to process a certain amount of ego death. I mean, we’ve been in this band since we were teenagers, and so to be in our 50s and to have it kind of pulled out from under us, you start to think, ‘Well, I’ve always identified so closely with being from this…’ I mean, of course, we’re fathers and we work and we have jobs and we have lives outside of the band, but the central pillar through all those other changes since we were not even yet fully grown was this band. And so I think there was a positive aspect of internally processing what we are as individuals and human beings without that to lean into or to provide or to define us.”
What pulled him back was physical: “But we missed it. I felt in my body I was missing the roar of the amplifiers behind me. I was missing looking over my left shoulder and seeing Jason smashing those giant drums. And so Aaron comes in, and we start getting way more serious. And the music is flowing, but we still didn’t really… And some other members of the group were also going through really trying times, really difficult things in their own personal lives, and we just weren’t sure we were gonna find the energy to carry it through. We didn’t want to announce anything or say anything until we had something to actually hold in front of us, just in case it went south. It felt a bit tenuous. “
Then came the call. Charlie Speicher, a friend of Von Till‘s, founded Firekeeper Alliance, a non-profit working to reduce youth suicide on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. Von Till sits on its board. Speicher knew about the split but had no idea a record was underway.
“But we sat down and committed when Charlie, who started that Firekeeper Alliance I was telling you about, asked, ‘Is there any chance that Neurosis…’ ‘Cause we were friends and he knew about our secret. He didn’t know we were making a record,” he continued. “We didn’t know we were making a record. But he asked, ‘Is there a chance that Neurosis could be the Firekeeper Alliance headliner at [the] Fire In The Mountains [festival] next year [2026] to represent our message?’ And [he] explained to me, in words I’d heard before, what Neurosis‘ music meant to him on an emotional level and what it means to other people. And just through the indigenous lens and through the lens of Firekeeper Alliance, I saw the stories in a different light. I was always hesitant to take them on because I didn’t want some crazy ballooning of the ego to happen because I honestly don’t feel that we personally are responsible for what the music does to people. I think that’s just the nature of music, and we’re just these lucky guys that have found this unique, original, intense, heavy music to channel, shape and release. But that new lens was one of responsibility.
He described the request as giving the band a purpose outside itself.
“Maybe if our music could actually help somebody get through a moment that they might not be able to take back, then maybe if we actually have this gift that can reach down into the nether world of sound and pull out something that might be of help to somebody… ? Of course it’s gonna help us. It’s always been helpful for us to purge emotionally this way and to channel our emotions and feelings this way. But seeing it as a responsibility was different, and so being asked straight up, can we come and deliver our music for this reason?, pushed us over the line and gave us a reason bigger than ourselves, outside of ourselves, put the music in alignment with its purpose, which is greater than our own egos, greater than our desire to have our own rock band back, and all that stuff. And that gave us that — pun intended, it lit the fire that got us to actually book studio time the next day after we had that conversation, and to make it happen over the next few months, even though we weren’t really ready and didn’t have it finished, but we saw the skeleton, and we realized that this had to be the way. This was the way we were gonna do it.”
Von Till also explained why the organisation uses heavy music as part of its approach, alongside making mental health services accessible to Indigenous communities and connecting them to traditional methods of healing.
He said: “And one of the critical pillars of this group, besides making mental health services applicable to indigenous communities and increasing access and tying it to traditional methods of healing and connection, but utilizing heavy music and recognizing that heavy music has always looked darkness right in the eye. It’s never shied away from pain and suffering. It sees it for what it is and it sits with it, and it provides, one, if you’re creating it, a positive outlet, to express those emotions we can’t always name. Two, as listeners and fans, we all know what music has done for us in being involved in weird, strange music, whether it’s just as a listener or wanting to start a fanzine or a podcast, it provides meaning, it provides connection, it provides a way to maybe get us through some of those dark moments. And so the bada** counselors and educators over there in Browning, Montana have embraced that as a protective factor. Even though we’ve always believed that as lifers in independent music, they have embraced it as something that we can actually use from a clinical perspective in mental health practice, outside of the modern Western methods, which don’t necessarily work or apply to everybody.”
An Undying Love For A Burning World appeared without warning on March 20, the spring equinox, through Neurot Recordings. It is the band’s twelfth album and their first since 2016’s Fires Within Fires, running eight tracks across roughly an hour. Scott Evans recorded it at Studio Litho in Seattle over three weekends last winter and mixed it in three days at his own Antisleep Audio in Oakland, six weeks before release.
Aaron Turner, who fronted Isis and plays in Sumac and Old Man Gloom, had toured with Neurosis for years before joining.
The band played its first show in seven years on July 25 at Red Eagle Campground in East Glacier Park, on Blackfeet Nation land, headlining Fire In The Mountains with the set presented by Firekeeper Alliance. They played ten songs, mostly from the new album, along with “The Tide” from 2001’s A Sun That Never Sets and “Lost” from 1993’s Enemy Of The Sun.
Two more dates follow. Neurosis play Hellbender by The Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina on September 5 alongside Acid Bath, Melvins and Kylesa, then two homecoming shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco on October 16 and 17, back in the city where they formed. More announcements are expected.
