Welcome back to another Fresh Friday! Today we cover the incredibly unexpected return of Neurosis, as well as new releases from Këkht Aräkh, ADULT., Flea and King Tuff. All of these albums experiment with similar genre-bending wild experimentation to create some grandiose masterpieces; each taking you on their own journey that you really want to lock into. While all across different scenes and sounds, all of these albums do share a similar goal in bringing a more ambitious and artistic experience to the listener than we are used to.
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Neurosis: An Undying Love For A Burning World (released March 20, 2026): Neurot Recordings
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The return of Neurosis was wholly unexpected in the music world. After the band’s leader, Scott Kelly, committed professional hara-kiri, cancelling himself as a means of confronting his demons as an abuser, people just assumed that was the last they would be hearing of the band. I was lucky enough to catch Neurosis’ last Los Angeles performance at the short-lived Power of the Riff festival, taking place at The Regent Theater in 2016. For those not fortunate enough to ever see Neurosis live, they are a band that offers a totally unique visual and sonic experience. As the innovators of post metal, Neurosis hypnotizes audiences to hear and see their performance from a more subconscious state of mind and being that people do not usually get to step inside throughout their waking lives. Something about Neurosis live taps into that place and lets it lead the conscious brain through the performance.
In the meantime, members of the band have still been actively making music. Steve Von Till has been performing his gothic, psychedelic Americana music and has become a mainstay at what could be the country’s most unique destination metal festival, Fire in the Mountains. Fire in the Mountains is more than just a music festival though, it is a sacred gathering taking place at the Red Eagle Campground in Montana’s Blackfeet Nation tribal land, where proceeds go to the Firekeeper Alliance, a nonprofit suicide prevention organization protecting the Blackfeet Nation. It is a festival with a purpose, and to announce their surprise headliner, they ushered in a new incarnation of Neurosis with a surprise album and a new member.
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That new member was Aaron Turner, guitarist and vocalist of Isis, and that new album is An Undying Love For A Burning World. With the world burning as the title suggests, many of you surely saw the band announce their reunion, but how many of you have deeply listened to this 8 song album?
After putting myself in the vulnerable state of mind to receive the music properly, I conclude this is the exact music that can inspire humanity to douse the world’s flames. Beginning with “We Are Torn Wide Open,” a harmony of howls that harkens back to the intensity of their early crust punk days, you are quickly catapulted into a doomy, mathy, impossibly heavy musical tapestry with “Mirror Deep.”
You can sense all the time spent brooding in the anger and volatility of the vocals, and when the riffs liquify into ambient sounds, they drift you into the next brutal passage. The track feels like tumbling down a pit of spikes, with demons crawling up the walls, cackling at your fall. There are moments though, when you are in free fall, that you find peace within the havoc.
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“First Red Rays” begins with a reverberating ambient aura, pulling the listener into a slow, heavy trip. As brutal and heavy as the song is, you sense a closeness and connection to nature at its heart:
As beasts we crawl
Our souls in tatters
Low to the dirt we scrape
Degraded and hollowed
Callous winds come ripping
Every small light consumed
Cower in rooms made coffins
Quiver as to dust we turn
Drift weightless without form
Stilled in timeless air
Hang eternal stars
Coursing paths we cross
Into lightening sky
Fading
On frozen peaks
First red rays, earth from heavens severed
All born, empty and silent
From blind night torn
New dawn unveiled
With lyrics that touch on timelessness, the songs meet the eternal all around us instead of tapping into a single emotion, idea, metaphor, or statement. The moments on this track where the metal meets the ambient music, that is the sonic synthesis of Neurosis, like two halves of the brain meeting into a single person.
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The distorted noise that begins “Blind” surrounds the signal of a single guitar strumming until the soundscape descends into another delicious hell. When I imagine who the narrator of these songs is, I imagine a being that exists beyond time, an elder sage like The Giver or something, as if these brutal tracks are merely vehicles for teaching wisdom.
Imagine hearing these lyrics at Fire in the Mountains, you can start tripping just letting the image pass through your mind’s eye:
Adrift on sightless plains
Arid ground tearing soles
Devour all, our own
Starved eyes, see nothing
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“Seething and Scattered” has one of the most intense and emotional vocal performances on the record, driving the visceral guitars until the song’s sonic character drops way down low, crawling on its belly to give the listener a bit of relief on their trip. Pink Floydian synths bounce and jingle to let the mind wander and ponder before the drums kick back in and the song ascends back up the tower of sound. On this track, more than the others, I can sense the mind’s journey through the music as its vulnerable, intoxicated state is led on a tour of different neural and spiritual pathways.
“Untethered” seems to be the most straightforward heavy track, as jagged and wavy as parts of it get. Even when Neurosis wants to barrage you with metal, the band cannot help but deliver the sound with a mindbending tone.
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“In the Waiting Hours” slows things down as the album comes to a close, giving the listener a breath to reflect on the experience. You leave this album as if you are trudging through the murkiest part of your soul, and in that murk, certain steps drag you under all over again like quicksand doom riffs. The song then peaks, giving the listener one last taste of those tumultuous howls.
The last trickles of psychotic depravity made music come in the form of “Last Light,” the final track. Topping out at 16 minutes, Neurosis will have metalheads fall back in love with the art of the long song. With grindy growls and desperate wails haunting the song’s intro, the riffs become informed and infused with this sheen of human suffering that makes feeling out each riff all the more visceral.
By the end, I did not just feel like I listened to An Undying Love For A Burning World, I felt tested by it. I came out barely the same on the other side, as if I could feel parts of my mind fraying after lending my ears to the pain of this enormous monument of heavy music that is Neurosis.
I would not recommend doing psychedelics to this music. The creators have done that for you and ventured far enough into the depths of the human mind to come back with its darkest insights. In 2026, during one of the most painful epochs in world history, this music hits an especially soft part of the soul and heart. Just know that the music of Neurosis is not for minds that refuse to outgrow old shells.
Other NEW March 27, 2026 Releases:
ADULT.: Kissing Luck Goodbye (released March 27th 2026- DAIS Records
Our favorite Detroit, electro, punk, dark wave, goth duo, since 1998 is ADULT. This forever unquantifiable couple continue with their 10th studio album and have added a sharper edge to their newest offering that they warned was coming in our 2023 interview.
Këkht Aräkh: Morning Star (released March 27, 2026)- Sacred Bones Records
Black metal’s sensitive swordsman, Këkht Aräkh, released Morning Star this Friday, and if you want more of the lo fi, hazy, blackened emotional outpourings that you expect from this artist, then this album definitely delivers.
Flea: Honora (Released March 27, 2026)- Nonesuch Records Inc.
Flea’s solo album Honora features an ensemble of brilliant musicians like Thom Yorke and Nick Cave having fun with modern classics, making the closest thing to no-wave that anyone is doing in 2026. Honora gives alternative rock fans a new reason to rediscover jazz if they haven’t given the genre a listen in a while.
King Tuff: Moo (released March 27, 2026)- MUP, Thirty Tigers
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King Tuff is back with Moo and giving fans the garage rock they crave. After all these years and through the many eras of his career, his music seems just as invigorated now by his mission as ever.
We wish you the happiest of Fresh Fridays. Enjoy your new music!
Words by Rob Shepyer
