Released in tandem, Scott
Kelly's The Wake and
Steve Von Till's The Grave Is A Grim Horse—new solo albums from Neurosis' two
frontmen—feature the grizzled howls of a couple of gravelly avant-metal
vets playing folk music. They've both dabbled in the quiet stuff before, and
it's almost depressing how little new ground they break with these new efforts—especially
Kelly's The Wake,
an album so stiff and stringy, it might as well be roadkill. With an unsure
voice and the starkest of chords, Kelly hammers out a brittle impersonation of
Michael Gira, drained dry of the master's gallows humor and sense of
grotesquerie as transcendence.