Scott Kelly is a busy man, and so are the collected members of Amenra; both parties have an ever-growing number of musical and artistic projects going at all times, and the fruits of their varied labors never disappoint. Given the sonic and spiritual similarities between Neurosis and Amenra, it’s hard to believe that the twain had never really met in a recorded sense before, and I’m sure I’m far from the only fan who’s wondered how such a meeting would play out. Now, thanks to a well-timed suggestion from a storied Belgian record label, we’re about to find our answer.

Listen to the album-slash-track in full below, and read on for some thoughts from its creators. Absent in Body will be made available on limited-edition vinyl come January 20 on HypertensionRecords.

Scott Kelly of Neurosis told Noisey, „Absent In Body was born out of friendship and mutual artistic respect. It’s something that came very naturally to us in midst of all of our individual and collective creative processes. I’m extremely proud of this song and I look forward to the three of us exploring the world sonically in the future. Hopefully this will all result in us getting Absent In Body onto the stage at some point down the line.“

Mathieu Vandekerckhove (Syndrome/Amenra) commented, „Ralf of Hypertension asked us if we wanted to be a part of [the label’s] The Abyss Stares Back series. The plan was basically that Scott Kelly and I were going to release a split; we played a few shows with our solo projects and then we came up with the idea to work together as a collaboration. We exchanged ideas over the internet and so together we built this creation; later we asked Collin to join this project.

We will definitely do further work on this project, The Abyss Stares Back was just the trigger. We are working on a full length album, and in the future we will play shows.

Colin H Van Eeckhout of Amenra and CHVE about the project: „I joined AIB when I was on tour with Scott last year (January 2016), where Mathieu worked from home and sent through audio every day. And we mailed stuff hence and forth throughout the tour then we got together to record when we played Belgium. And again six months after that when Neurosis played Belgium in the summer ’16. It is definitely a project we want to follow up on, since now we did this right amidst the writing processes and recordings our main bands, but we all felt the need and urgency for AIBs existence.