“We don’t do it for anybody else. We don’t give a shit if anyone likes it. That’s an added bonus and ego strokes are nice if that makes you want to keep doing it for some reason but we make this music because we feel driven to and we have to.”-Steve Von Till, 2010.

We are often shaped by the world or our own tunnel vision and karma. Many people live in agony or ecstasy or find that what they thought was a bedrock is only an illusion or a façade like some old Western movie prop or “The Man Behind The Curtain” from the Wizard Of Oz. Every human and creature on this Earth is part of the greater continuum and there are few bands that embody the freedom, bondage, agony and ecstasy from the raw edge of life to the somber march of time like the one and only mighty Neurosis. Through thick and thin they have soldiered on with a vision that has left them few peers in music when it comes to scope, cohesion and arc of influence.

As is likely to happen with any band, everyone has a favorite album or era if they are into Neurosis. The great thing about them is each record will, if taken in with an open ear, bring you somewhere new. This is music to be engaged in and to let settle in the bones. It’s so intense at times you don’t have a choice anyway, truly. Whether you like The Word As Law or Times Of Grace or The Eye Of Every Storm, each will leave a mark on you. That said, nowadays most people agree that it was with 1993’s Enemy Of The Son that Neurosis first completely created something so powerful and intimidating that it changed the vocabulary of music. Truly free and risk taking art, whether Godflesh’s Selfless or Crisis’ Deathshead Extermination, Candiria’s The Process Of Self-Development or freakin’ Pink Floyd’s THE WALL cannot help but live vibrantly through embracing a true surrender to the process of free creation. This isn’t to say that more run of the mill rock isn’t valid, rather that the best stuff comes from respect for the value of art as sociology before gimmick. Even in the case of Andy Warhol and the idea that some art that is “disingenuous” can become re-contextualized as a sly mind fuck of great proportions, Andy was well aware of art as a truly important cause (even if he didn’t always let on).

ENEMY is still one of the most severely engrossing recordings of all time and the band has given it a terrific re-release treatment. Featuring stunning new packaging from Neurosis visual wizard and A Storm Of Light honcho Josh Graham, the record is as meaningful (if not more so) than ever. Simultaneously, we also are lucky enough this year to get Neurosis’ LIVE AT ROADBURN 2007, a landmark document of the band at one of the most important extreme musical soirees in the world. “A Season In The Sky” is more chilling and starkly lonely than ever while the title track from Given To Tht Rising resonates from the speakers with as much force as you could ever hope for without being front of stage at a concert.

I hunkered down in a comfy chair at my band Antidote 8’s Darkworld Studio and talked via phone with a thoughtful Steve Von Till about these important chapters for the legendary West Coast band and the merits of sewing the seeds of your own musical destiny.

MORGAN Y. EVANS: This is obviously a great time for you guys with the Live At Roadburn release and the re-release of Enemy Of The Sun. I have a few questions about both, if that’s alright.

STEVE VON TILL: Absolutely.

MYE: Great. Y’know, the band’s sound has developed a lot from the very beginning before you were in the band with Pain Of Mind and now it feels so self-assured, which is interesting with a name like Neurosis. You think of people being neurotic but it’s almost like you guys are above ego and make this unified cosmic sound as one entity. A lot of that started with Souls At Zero but also Enemy in particular. I was wondering what it’s like for you to listen to that record now?

SVT: Ummm…I don’t. (laughing) We don’t really listen to our own music, y’know? For me that record was really a great time for discovering a few things. Souls At Zero is really where we began to find our voice, I think. What we were capable of. We were challenging our abilities as far as what we could play and how we could play it. We’d added keyboards and samples and really went out on a limb as far as destroying our old way of looking at making music and trying to approach it from this epic, sonic movement point of view. I look back and while Souls was a huge step forward for us, like the words you said, playing the material in Souls gave us the confidence which hinted at the future but Enemy is where it became more of a second nature. It’s where we really began to find how surrendering ourselves to this music could put us in a trance state and we could dissolve into the music. It really wasn’t ego based and is driven from a bigger force. We’re spiraling in towards a center from outside somewhere. Each time around the loop we get a little bit closer. We’ll probably never reach it because I do believe it’s infinite, but Enemy was a significant part of that trip, that journey…especially for that idea of surrendering to the sound and let the sound truly come out of the center of the Earth and guide us to where it wants to take us.

MYE: It’s interesting you say that. Some of the art that Josh Graham has done, especially with this rerelease, Given To The Rising and the Roadburn record kind of unifies things as far as the imagery is concerned stylistically in some ways. Listening to the Roadburn record it’s interesting to hear different threads between different eras of the band and new things coming up out of this sort of live scenario too.

SVT: It’s always about moving forward and evolving. Being emotionally pure and honest in intent or otherwise it’s not worth doing.

MYE: I recently saw Jarboe’s show at Union Pool in Brooklyn and one of the opening bands Bezoar, I befriended them. Sara and Tyler from that band wanted me to ask you two things. Tyler wanted to know what tricks or amps or gear you remember using to get the incredible sounds on Enemy and also Sara wanted me to ask you how you felt about the finished product when that album came out originally…if you were nervous about it or not?

SVT: Um…first question first. We basically had the same gear. We’ve changed some stuff over the years. I might even be playing the same head that I had then.

MYE: That’s awesome.

SVT: Yeah. So, it’s not so much about the gear. We fine tune and dial stuff in and have developed pedal addictions since then. For the most part with the raw sounds…I’m still playing the same guitars I played in ’92-’93, yep. Pretty much the same stuff. No major significant changes, I would say. Oh, second question…how’d we feel about it? Like every record, pleased. It’s totally self centered music. We don’t do it for anybody else. We don’t give a shit if anyone likes it. That’s an added bonus and ego strokes are nice if that makes you want to keep doing it for some reason but we make this music because we feel driven to and we have to. If we didn’t all that energy and emotions would boil up in our lives in some other way which would probably be a lot less productive than making music. For looking back on it, we were extremely proud of Enemy Of The Sun. We went into the studio thinking we were going to make and EP and we were so inspired that we took a week break, went back to the studio and came back with enough for a full length record. We were delighted and having fun in the studio. It was flowing and effortless. Yeah, we were extremely proud of it. That was absolutely pushing our abilities and vision to its’ limit at that time.

MYE: Right on, man. I really love what you just said about that you have to make the music for yourself because it’s so tragic that some bands copy other bands when it isn’t in an homage way or about influences. When bands are doing it for the wrong reasons, this is their lives! What if you only get one life and you weren’t even being yourself?!! That’s fucked up! (laughing)

SVT: (laughing) Yeah, fuck that.

MYE: (laughing)

SVT: Or even if you are a band and doing great stuff but you worry about what other people think and you let fans or the media or journalists shape you…If you worry about what other people think it will influence your decisions and I think you can hear that in some artists. I think it’s obvious when people pander. It’s really demeaning and flies in the face of genuine art, I think. It’s kind of a fuck you to genuine art. Not that people can’t make genuine art by trying to make popular pop art or pop music. That’s valid if people want to do that and they are serious about it, that’s cool. In our music scene it is about making intense original music for yourself. We wanna do that and maintain purity with our sound. It’s too sacred to shit on it like that.

MYE: Definitely. I like good cover songs but not relying on it and original music is very important. Also, if you are writing commercial music don’t pretend it’s for something else when you’re really hoping it to be for a fucking McDonald’s commercial, you know? (chuckling)

SVT: (laughing)

MYE: I wanted to ask you about the Roadburn show in 2007, about the experience. I’ve heard it and it is very powerful but what is it about all the shows you played that made you decide to make this one a new live document?

SVT: Hmmm…well, one thing that stands out is we don’t record very many performances. We don’t have a library of live tapes, y’know?

MYE: I did not know that.

SVT: Yeah. That’s not the case. It’s very rare we have a quality recording ever done of us. Roadburn is a festival unlike any other festival. Most festivals are these big clusterfucks with artists from every type of genre or all this metal stuff. Roadburn is like 5 or 6 gigs you wanna be at all on the same day. It’s all mostly underground. No big egos. People are hanging out. The venue is small. It’s the size of a regular gig stuffed with all these great bands. The people are so awesome and so hospitable and genuine. The Roadburn promoters and team and club where it takes place…everybody is so nice, respectful and organized, just wanting to pull off this killer music event. When you get where everyone wants to pull off something they wanna be a part of and see…

SPARKY: (barking)

MYE: Be quiet, Sparky! Sorry, studio dog just barked.

SVT: (laughing) Shut up, dog!... It’s just really spiritual. It’s very special. So we got this killer recording from a gig that felt really amazing. They went on to allow us to host 2009’s Roadburn. Amazing people and it really stands out as one of the highlights of our musical career. If we were gonna put out another live record it seemed that’d be the best way, from a venue with great people that we really liked. We got the master tracks from them and Noah and Dave worked really hard in their home studios on getting a good mix. It turned out great. Y’know, it’s warts and all. There’s mistakes and bad notes and all kinds of stuff in there. I mean, you can never capture the intensity of what we do live. You have to be there, but I think it comes pretty close.

MYE: Like you said before, you always play what you want. I saw you years ago with Soulfly, Hatebreed and Willhaven and went with my friend Matt from the band The Arkhams now, well… I like those bands on that tour but Matt and I ended up almost getting in a stupid fight with some meathead guys back then because you went so far over their heads and they were being rude and trying to fight people while you played. Then I saw you again at Relapse Contamination Festival with Mastodon and it was the first time you’d played the East Coast in a few years. That show was more a “Relapse” crowd but it’s just so awesome you always do your own thing no matter the audience and make it about the music. It must’ve been great to do Roadburn though and know that everyone is really out to be a part of the experience.

SVT: Yeah. Roadburn was very special.

MYE: How did it feel when you got feedback about Enemy Of The Sun when it came out? Like you said it was made for yourselves but it must’ve been cool to hear from people when it broadened their musical horizons, right?

SVT:Yeah. Back then it wasn’t a given that people were gonna like it at all. We definitely got mixed reviews, for sure. I don’t remember for sure, that was a long time ago (chuckling). A lot of people didn’t like it. We alienated a lot of our punk rock fans. We came of age in the kind of DIY punk rock scene and we were now sellouts because we had keyboards.

MYE: Yeah, and you sounded like Electric Light Orchestra, of course.

SVT: We weren’t “punk” to them because we were doing what we wanted, which I thought was the definition of punk. I thought punk was no rules, to do what you want and yourselves. Apparently not to some people, but we took the few freaks with us and we went out in search of our own people. People had no idea what to do with us and we never gelled in any of those scenes. We drifted in between those disparate movements and found the people in the corners looking for something different. As we were musically all freaks we built something but it took awhile. I remember a review of that record where someone said, “I don’t know what these guys are so angry about. Maybe their tour van should crash and they should all die.”

MYE: Woah. Did you track him down and kick his ass?

SVT: If he’s gonna say things like that I’m sure karma has kicked him in the ass anyway a few different times. I wouldn’t say ENEMY was critically acclaimed at the time. There were a few pockets in the country that got it and Europe that got it, but it was definitely an underground, freakish movement. It still is, really…but music has come around and nothing is really that weird anymore.

MYE: And also you’ve held your own and stuck to your guns and made such a series of records that mean a lot to people. The confidence carries its’ own weight.

SVT: It’s just a different world. Their weren’t as many clubs that catered to that kind of music. There weren’t magazines like Decibel magazine catering towards anything close to what you’d call an extreme scene for underground music across multiple genres. We collected enough freaks to carry it to the next level.

MYE: I wanted to ask about “Cleanse” and how you decided to end Enemy Of The Sun with all the drumming and everything? I always liked when Sepultura would have crazy drum jams with Biohazard or something, but Enemy Of The Sun was a whole other deep level.

SVT: We’d been experimenting with it in a couple of the songs on that record. The song “Enemy Of The Sun” and “Time Of Beasts”, but I can’t remember for sure. We were definitely experimenting and spacing out. We’d do jams of just feedback or strange bits for minutes…tapes. We had percussion sitting there. What happens when people are out of their minds and a bunch of drums are sitting there? (laughing)

MYE: (laughing)

SVT: Y’know…you end up pounding on drums all night. We discovered that it was a…not to sound like a hippy drum jam but it was like a hippy drum jam.

MYE: It’s ok, man. I’m from Woodstock, NY.

SVT: You can enter a trance state. Physically pull yourself into motion and rhythm like that. We were definitely interested in doing that and opening those doors with our music and so when we came across that we decided we were gonna record it. The way we ended up doing it was getting a bunch of friends together, setting up in room together and picking a bunch or rhythms to go from.We just went nuts. We got lucky and it was a good track and we added some freaked out vocals and sounds to make it into that psychedelic journey into the woods. Make it that trip where you don’t know where up and down is and you’re lost in it.

MYE: Yeah, man. Absolutely. The fucking… quest.

SVT: (laughing) Exactly. It’s hard to talk about that stuff without sounding cheesy but for us it was a genuine attempt to seek that out.

MYE: It’s interesting you say that because I think it’s good to talk about those things. I just went to an Iroquois Museum in the mountains in Upstate, NY and my friends and I met an artist there named Eli Thomas (http://elithomasart.com/). It was so amazing to hear his stories and see how fluidly he incorporated nature into his paintings. There was level upon level of symbolism in his work and animals hidden in there. It reminds me of a quote from one of your records, I think it was Times Of Grace. I forget the exact liner note but it said how you hoped the music was tied into the cycles of life and nature and I think it’s really become that in many ways.

SVT: It’s hard for us to separate it from nature for us. It feels like it exists and we get lucky and tap into it, y’know?

MYE: Right on, man. If there’s time I wanted to ask about the last Harvestman record In A Dark Tongue. That is on its’ own a really interesting record of sounds and influences you went for there. I was wondering your headspace when you did that?

SVT: The Harvestman material…the first Harvestman record happened by accident much like my first solo record happened by accident. When you have a lot of stuff at your house you kind of just end up having stuff going on and at one point after several years of having a studio I had all these tapes of stuff that didn’t fit in here or there but had some sort of cohesive element to it. There’s some body of work here but it’s kind of presenting itself to me by accident. The first one was like that. There’s the abstract Tribes Of Neurot angle where it’s still several of us together and the vibe of Neurosis, or the solo stuff where I try to craft songs in a traditional way…which is pretty challenging for somebody who’s spent his adult life making epic free form movements. Harvestman is kinda everything that’s left. Taking the influences of what I like to read like European folklore and the influences of folk music and space rock and electronic music. Not dance music but experimentation. A lot of odd European music and ancient stone sights and folklore. It makes sense to me (laughing)! I wouldn’t expect it to make sense to anybody else. It’s kind of taking the rest of my influences, because I can’t have 5 million projects…and just kind of throwing them at the wall and seeing what parts of it gel together. There are elements of Celtic music and drone and space rock. Even dub music. Not in style but in treating the studio as an instrument. It doesn’t matter if you track to tape or a computer but what you sculpt out of it in the end that matters.

MYE: Very cool.

SVT: It’s all fair game. I’m not married to any of it, y’know?

MYE: That’s a great attitude. I like that you said that. Different approaches have their merits.

SVT: Yeah and it all gels together. Lately I’ve been playing the Harvestman stuff live and combining it with the solo stuff. Finding a way to use my effects pedals and loopers and all that to kind of bring not only the space rock and drone aspect and textural guitar stuff but also adding it to my songwriting stuff and having them influence each other. Try to make it flow seamlessly. I think my next stuff might be some kind of combination of the two, I don’t know.

MYE: That’s interesting. “To The Field” was so spare and interesting and even Neurosis on some records where you have quieter parts you find a way to make it become you.

SVT: Contrast sometimes is what you need to give it all meaning.

MYE: Well, on behalf of Crusher Magazine and myself, thanks for your time today and also thank you for all the great fearless art you’ve done over the years.

SVT: We do it because we have to and appreciate that anyone gives a crap and thank you for your time and efforts.

MYE: Play the East Coast more!

SVT: (laughing) It’s hard to get over there but we’ll make it happen.

MYE: Alright. Later, man.
SVT: Later, bro.

MYE: Take care.