STEVE VON TILL On NEUROSIS's Return: 'I Felt In My Body I Was Missing The Roar Of The Amplifiers Behind Me'

In a new interview with The Vinyl Guide podcast, NEUROSIS vocalist/guitarist Steve Von Till spoke about the band's recently released first new album in a decade, "An Undying Love For A Burning World". The LP, which came out in March 2026 via Neurot Recordings, sees the band — Von Till, drummer Jason Roeder, bassist Dave Edwardson and keyboard player Noah Landis — joined by Aaron Turner (SUMAC, ISIS),a musician whose legacy is intertwined with NEUROSIS's own and a true kindred spirit.

Addressing the fact that he and his NEUROSIS bandmates had silently split with co-founder Scott Kelly in 2019, keeping Scott's domestic abuse and emotional manipulation and subsequent dismissal quiet to respect Kelly's family's wish for privacy, before Scott finally copped to the damage three years later, Von Till said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "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 — sstill grasping at the when and the why, to make specific plans. And it wasn't until a good friend of mine, Charlie Speicher, who started this nonprofit, Firekeeper Alliance, which I serve on the board of, which is a nonprofit — for the listeners, it's a nonprofit dedicated to providing protection and increasing awareness and mental health services to reduce suicide on the Blackfeet [Indian] Reservation in Montana. 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 badass 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."

Reflecting on the moment when he and his bandmates began to seriously consider a NEUROSIS comeback, Von Till said: "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. 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. 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. 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's 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. 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."

NEUROSIS played its first show in seven years on July 25 on the traditional lands of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana as part of the aforementioned Fire In The Mountains festival by special invitation of Firekeeper Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to reducing youth suicide in Indian Country.

Following Fire In The Mountains, NEUROSIS has been invited to play at Hellbender by The Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina on September 5, joining ACID BATH, MELVINS and KYLESA. NEUROSIS will also perform two very special homecoming shows at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco on October 16 and October 17, celebrating their return to the Bay Area where the band was formed.

Expect to see additional NEUROSIS live announcements over the weeks ahead.

"An Undying Love For A Burning World" was recorded by Scott Evans (KOWLOON WALLED CITY, SUMAC, GREAT FALLS) at Studio Litho in Seattle during three weekends last winter, and mixed in three days just six weeks before release at Evans's Antisleep Audio in Oakland.

Photo by Bobby Cochran