1. Times Of Grace (1999)

When you write about a rock album, the first instinct is usually to break it down into its components: Member X contributes this, Song Y sounds like that, Lyric Z goes like so, etc.

You can break down Times of Grace into its component parts. You can focus on its songwriting, which ever-so-slightly streamlines Through Silver In Blood's heaving girth. You can marvel at Steve Albini's production, which gave Neurosis the most devastating tones of their career and which began his ongoing relationship with the band. You can enumerate its chamber quintet's worth of un-metal instruments, which chime in to push climatic moments into the stratosphere. You can even try (and fail) to describe its apocalyptic riffing.

But doing so misses the point of this masterpiece. Times Of Grace captures a visionary band at the height of its powers and blessed with a unity of purpose. The divisions between instruments, voices, and songs fall away, and Neurosis acts as a single, cosmic force. It is very, very heavy. (Play Times Of Grace simultaneously with the Tribes Of Neurot companion album Grace for a truly mind-bending experience.)