One Friday morning last month, we all woke up in a suddenly different and exciting world when the once defunct Neurosis announced that not only were they reunited, but that they dropped a new album right then. It was a shock to the system not unlike a bucket of ice water hitting you in the face when you least expected it. Now, with the shock dying down and An Undying Love For A Burning World firmly in all our playlists, Neurosis’ Steve Von Till opened up about how that massive surprise came to be.

Details came out during Von Till’s appearance on The New Scene. In that interview, he discussed what it was like for the band to suddenly fall apart in 2019 after all the bad shit co-founder and vocalist Scott Kelly admitted to doing to his family came to light.

“Well, I don’t wanna feed too much oxygen into a certain situation as we’re looking forward. But we weren’t sure. We had to walk away and put it on ice. We had to get perspective. You can imagine that the entire mixed emotions that we had of having essentially our life’s work pulled out from under us… It was heartbreaking and devastating and shameful, seeing what our name was associated with.

“Everything we had to say about that, we said in that statement that we did at that time, and we still stand by exactly those words. So when we were finally free to talk about things openly in 2022, when we did speak that, then we finally could at least… I don’t even know how to put it.

“I think, late 2023 or so – I don’t remember the dates exactly – but the four of us got together and started making some noise, not knowing, not having a plan, not having a purpose, not knowing what was happening. And we could instantly feel that everything we’ve always been is still there. Our desire is still there. Our unique voice will always be what it is, just because of our communal process. But it still wasn’t clear.

“It wasn’t clear until we brought Aaron in as the much-needed element and the much-needed kind of new energy and interesting perspectives. ‘Cause we had a lot of different ways we perceived maybe reinventing ourselves sonically in different ways and manipulating sound. But Aaron was the missing piece that we needed to bring in to really make it jell and make it clear. And it instantly felt right. And the music started coming and the music that started coming was really inspiring.”

In his conversation, Von Till recollected the moment they had Sumac’s Aaron Turner come out to play with ’em. According to him, things moved pretty fast once everyone realized Turner was the guy to take over for the ousted Kelly.

“It wasn’t until this crystallizing moment where we sat down together in Aaron’s yard, on the island he lives on, in front of the little shack we were playing in, and, ‘Are we doing this? If we’re doing this, we’re making plans tomorrow.’

“And that was September [of 2025]. And here we are… We had another rehearsal session or two, and then it was recording the first third. ‘Cause we weren’t prepared to record and rehearse it all at once. It was just too much material. So we just said, ‘Let’s break it into bite-sized chunks.’ We only have weekends. We’re all working class. We all have to go to work like everybody else.

“And so we just decided we’re just going to focus on zooming in on one third and really deconstructing it, putting it back together into its most essential form that we felt right and then two weeks later record it.

“Two weeks later, rehearse the second third, two weeks later record it. Two weeks later rehearse the last third, two weeks later record it. Two weeks later mix it. Have the mastering engineer on standby, waiting for the files from Scott Evans. And we were approving test pressings weeks ago before the [late March 2026 album] drop.”