No campaign, no singles, no press release. An Undying Love for a Burning World just appeared on March 20. The only announcement was the music. Exactly what I’d hope for from the band who introduced me to the black on black logo shirt.

Neurosis formed in Oakland in 1985. They spent the 1990s on Alternative Tentacles and Relapse building a sound that fused post-punk, doom, and ritual noise into something that had no name at the time. The Steve Albini-produced Times of Grace (1999) was meant to be played alongside their Tribes of Neurot ambient collaboration — two records, two stereos, one architecture.

By A Sun That Never Sets (2001), with Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly trading impossibly heavy vocals over collapsed rhythms, they had invented a genre. Their last album, Fires Within Fires, came out in 2016.

The part that tips it over: dude from ISIS got his dream job. Aaron Turner — vocalist and guitarist for ISIS and Sumac, founder of Hydra Head Records — joins as a full member. Critics have used the term “Neur-Isis” since the early 2000s, shorthand for two bands building the same aesthetic from parallel directions simultaneously. Turner said he felt Neurosis’s music was “the music my heart and mind had been seeking” from the moment he first heard them over 30 years ago. Steve Von Till’s only hesitation about asking him: “It seemed so obvious.” It took until 2026 for the obvious to happen.

Scott Evans (Kowloon Walled City, Great Falls) recorded the album at Studio Litho in Seattle. Eight tracks. The two-part closer runs nearly 30 minutes. They play their first show in seven years at Fire in the Mountains festival in Montana this July.

Do we even deserve this?

Listen: https://neurosis.bandcamp.com/album/an-undying-love-for-a-burning-world

The Bandcamp Daily feature on the making of the record is the best first read: Inside the Miraculous Return of Neurosis. The Quietus review draws the A Sun That Never Sets parallel and earns it: The Quietus.

Thirty-nine years in. Still no peers.

RESEARCH NOTES

ARTIST: Neurosis

RELEASE: An Undying Love for a Burning World

FORMED: 1985, Oakland, CA

MEMBERS: Dave Edwardson, Jason Roeder, Steve Von Till, Noah Landis, Aaron Turner (joined 2024)

LABEL: Neurot Recordings

GENRE/SCENE: Post-metal / sludge metal / atmospheric sludge metal

RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2026 (surprise drop — no advance notice)

PRODUCER/ENGINEER: Scott Evans (Kowloon Walled City, Sumac, Great Falls) at Studio Litho, Seattle

TRACKLIST: We Are Torn Wide Open / Mirror Deep / First Red Rays / Blind / Seething and Scattered / Untethered / In the Waiting Hours / Last Light

BANDCAMP: neurosis.bandcamp.com/album/an-undying-love-for-a-burning-world

METACRITIC: 92 (universal acclaim) | PITCHFORK: 8.3

KEY QUOTES:

  • Aaron Turner: “From the moment I first heard Neurosis over 30 years ago, I felt this was the music my heart and mind had been seeking but not yet heard.”
  • Steve Von Till on Turner: “The only hesitation about Aaron at first was that it seemed so obvious.”

PRESS: