NEIL YOUNG & THE CHROME HEARTS : AS TIME EXPLODES

NEIL YOUNG & THE CHROME HEARTS : AS TIME EXPLODES

Daddy Went Walkin'
Looking Forward
Harvest Moon
Ohio
Name Of Love
Be The Rain
Big Crime
Long Walk Home
Vampire Blues
Cortez The Killer
After The Gold Rush
Like A Hurricane
Silver Eagle

Label : Reprise

Venue : various locations Europe & North America

Recording Date : July - September 2025

Length : 71:16

Release Date : May 29, 2026

Review (The Greedy Hand - Neil Young Archives Official Store)) : Shortly after the release of Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts album Talkin To The Trees in June 2025, the band embarked on a 31-date tour of Europe and North America. This live album includes selections from several shows. The European dates included performances at the legendary Glastonbury Festival, London’s Hyde Park and the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. The 13-track album includes songs that span Young’s entire career; including “Ohio” and “After The Gold Rush” from 1970 to “Silver Eagle” from the 2025 album, Talkin To The Trees. Also in the set list are Young classics such as “Harvest Moon”, “Like A Hurricane”, “Cortez The Killer”, and “Vampire Blues”. Making this album extra-special is the new song “Big Crime”, plus songs that have rarely been featured on recent Neil Young live albums, including “Long Walk Home”, “Daddy Went Walking”, “Be The Rain”, and “Name of Love”.

Review (AllMusic) : In 2025, everlasting songwriter Neil Young introduced his new band the Chrome Hearts on their jagged and sometimes politically furious album Talkin to the Trees. Almost immediately after the release of the album, Young, along with Micah Nelson on guitar, Spooner Oldham on keys, bassist Corey McCormick, and drummer Anthony LoGerfo, all hit the road for the 31-date, international Love Earth Tour. As Time Explodes was recorded at various dates of this tour, capturing a look at the band’s onstage chemistry as they brought 13 songs from across Young’s incomparable catalog to life. Things start out relatively slowly, with the first few songs easing the listener into the album. The semi-obscure "Daddy Went Walking" (rarely included on Young’s numerous live recordings) opens As Time Explodes, followed by the equally mellow acoustic numbers "Looking Forward" and "Harvest Moon" before the band turn the volume up with the classic Crosby Stills Nash & Young rocker "Ohio." From there, Young and his Chrome Hearts present a dynamic selection of fan favorites and unexpected entries. The gentle piano ballad "Long Walk Home" from 1987’s Life sits in perfect conversation with "After the Goldrush," while the brand-new protest song "Big Crime" (a Chrome Hearts tune written after Talkin to the Trees and presented for the first time on record here) pairs Young’s easily identifiable ragged guitar distortion with Oldham’s bluesy organ. The band do a great rendition of "Vampire Blues" from On the Beach before offering up solid performances of "Cortez the Killer" and "Like a Hurricane," songs that by this point in Young’s run feel emblematic of his sound and essential to the full experience of one of his concerts. Even on songs like these that have appeared in many versions over the years, the character of the Chrome Hearts - the emphasis of the organ and keys, the drawn-out interplay between the guitars, the thoughtful and generous communication between the players - makes even these well-worn tunes sound new.

Review (Glide Magazine) : Originally released on vinyl for Record Store Day in April 2025, the release in other formats over a month later clarifies how, in more ways than one, Neil Young’s live album with the Chrome Hearts is a mirror image of last year’s studio album with that band. Whereas Talkin’ To The Trees was full of the former Buffalo Springfielder’s observations about life as he sees it right now, from an aged perspective, As Time Explodes finds him rendering more broad, yet focused observations on our contemporary times in the context of his own history. To that end, the album begins with “Daddy Went Walkin’,” a winsome number taken from the 2000 album Silver & Gold. Ostensibly about the passing of Young’s late father Scott–and by the time it’s over, the author’s mother as well–Neil couches such potentially painful thoughts in the familiar sounds of acoustic guitar and harmonica plus the vocal harmonies of his bandmates. On a comparably sensitive point is the next, similarly arranged selection, “Looking Forward.” The title tune from the eighth and final studio album by Crosby, Stills & Nash–and their third as a quartet with Neil–makes an ideal setup for the overtly sentimental “Harvest Moon.” Roundly acclaimed by the audience, this saccharine number is, in its own way, as much of a paean to a calamitous past as the partly-electrified, topical likes of the “Ohio” that follows; there’s no question Young’s voice wavers as he works to penetrate the distortion emanating from his and guitar partner Micah Nelson’s fretboards, but, presumably aware of that frailty in prepping this album, the weakness communicates the powerless frustration of that bygone era without belaboring the point. A reference to our current state of affairs–plus a spooky pump organ courtesy the bandleader–pervades “Name of Love” (from CSNY’s American Dream LP of 1988). Spooner Oldham’s quick ripples of piano carry almost as much poignant relevance as the rest of this relatively quiet part of As Time Explodes, while the vaunted sessionman is also prominent through his organ playing on a cull from Greendale in “Be The Rain.” The metronomic drumming of this album’s associate producer, Anthony LoGerfo, rivals the steadfast timekeeping of Crazy Horse’s Ralph Molina. And it’s not much of a stretch to hear that stripped-down style as a metaphor for Neil Young’s attention to current events in his song selections here. “Long Walk Home,” for instance, is a woeful expression of despair in that regard, rendered all the more so as it follows the ranting and raving specificity of “Big Crime” (released as a single prior to the Trees LP) Recorded on the 2025 Chrome Hearts tour, “Vampire Blues” (from ’74’s On The Beach) thus sounds positively prescient in its references to ‘good times’ and ‘sucking blood from the earth.’ But the boozy gait of the band, navigated by bassist Corey McCormick (like his partner in the rhythm section, a one-time accompanist of Neil’s in the Promise of the Real group) precludes any heavy handedness, as does its less than five minute duration. In contrast, Young and the Hearts luxuriate in nearly fifteen minutes of “Cortez The Killer.” Taken from 1975’s Zuma LP, this is the first of three crowd-pleasing numbers, ensuring the contemporaneity pervading this album doesn’t become tiresome. On the contrary, this exercise in vivid imagination is of a piece with “After The Gold Rush,” offered in stark simplicity with the friend of CSN sitting at a grand piano to sing and warble on harmonica. When taken together as part of the vigorous conclusion to As Time Explodes, however, those numbers are no more indicative of the vigor in Neil Young’s recent work than the countrified jig of “Silver Eagle.” The excerpt from the aforementioned studio album of 2025 offers an opportunity to reflect on the previous dozen cuts, but, even more importantly, the song serves as an ever-so-apt juxtaposition to “Like A Hurricane.” The dramatic crescendos that lead into the centerpiece of 1977’s American Stars ‘n Bars suggest this composition has never rung so true as a simple (not silly) love song for the man who wrote and released it nearly half a decade ago. Such is that depth of emotion it corresponds to the absorbing nature of the sonics overseen by producer Lou Adler with Young and his long-time ‘Volume Dealer’ collaborator Niko Bolas. Such is the palpable impact; it permeates virtually the entire seventy-some minutes of As Time Explodes.

Review (Elsewhere) : When it comes to heritage artists – those with an enormous back-catalogue, like Neil Young - it helps if a reviewer declare their preferences and prejudices. Then you know where they are coming from. Elsewhere is largely ho-hum about much of Young's acoustic folk (Harvest is good), is partial to some of his country stylings (Harvest Moon and A Treasure we like) but generally gravitates to his electric work (Rust Never Sleeps, Cortex the Killer, Powderfinger, Like a Hurricane and so on), or oddities like This Note's For You, Arc/Weld and Le Noise. On the Beach has long been an Essential Elsewhere album, Tonight's the Night is there for us whenever we want to go down deep and in recent years amidst the slew of new releases, reissues and previously unreleased albums we only really embraced the sprawling Way Down in the Rust Bucket (another Essential Elsewhere album). So there you have it: preferences and prejudices declared. That never-ending release schedule has proven to be wearisome (and sometimes repetitive) but we dutifully try to give most of it a fair hearing, just in case there is something essential and not perfunctory. This double-vinyl live album recorded last year with the Chrome Hearts band captured us quickly, from the jaunty but heartfelt and sentimental Daddy Went Walkin', the delicate Looking Forward and a delightful Harvest Moon through to the payoff songs: an eerie Vampire Blues, an agonizingly slow 14 minute Cortez the Killer where his vocals are fragile but fitting, After the Goldrush, 10 minutes of the majestic Like a Hurricane and Silver Eagle. That's the kind of career-covering live album from Neil we can get into. Taken from various concerts, this is a fine one-stop Young album with detours into the pointed and plaintive anti-war Name of Love, the downbeat rock of Be the Rain with Young in righteous hectoring voice as he gets behind saving the environments and the new anti-Trump song Big Crime (“in DC at the White House”). Then after the equally political lament Long Walk Home it's into that home straight. Knowing Elsewhere's predilections, preferences and prejudices when it comes to Neil Young you can decide for yourself what to make of this review. But let me say again, this is our kind of Neil Young album. Recommended.

Review (Goldmine Magazine) : Ever-extensive and extraordinarily immersive, Neil Young’s ongoing series of recent releases shows no signs of abating just yet. Nevertheless, rather than delving into his seemingly endless trove of archival treasures, Young’s newest offering more or less brings the past to the present courtesy of the aptly-named As Time Explodes, an audio recap of last year's Love Earth tour. Aided and abetted by the Chrome Hearts, the latest in his ongoing series of backing bands, Young’s tendency to alternate his accompanists seems somewhat fickle as always, even as they set a new standard of ragged precision. This latest union is no exception, although that’s not to say this is a group consists entirely of newer compatriots. Spooner Oldham, a longtime Young associate, supplies the keys, and Micah Nelson, a holdover from Promise of the Real, provides guitars and backing vocals. They’re joined by drummer and associate producer Anthony LoGerfo and bassist Corey McCormick. Naturally, Neil supplies vocals, guitars, keys, harmonica and co-production along with Lou Adler, LoGerfo and Niko Bolas. The Chrome Hearts combo as a whole are veterans of another sort, having contributed to Young’s 2025 outing, Talkin To the Trees. The song selection consists of an even mix of certified standards and deeper cuts, one that reaches back to the very foundations of Young’s early career. So while there’s enough familiar fare to satisfy longtime devotees — “Harvest Moon”, “Like a Hurricane”, “Cortez The Killer” and “Vampire Blues” among the classic cuts, a new song titled “Big Crime” and several songs that have rarely been recorded live (“Long Walk Home,” “Daddy Went Walking,” “Be the Rain,” “Name of Love”) provides added enticement. As the set list calls for, the tone and tempo vary, from the down-home designs and fragile finesse of “Daddy Went Walking,” “Looking Forward,” “Harvest Moon,” “Silver Eagle” and “Name of Love,” to the absolute urgency and blistering intensity of “Ohio,” “Like a Hurricane,” “Be the Rain,” “Cortez the Killer,” and the aforementioned “Big Crime” (an indictment of the misuse of power and authority exercised by the current administration). Happily, Young remains true to the material’s original renditions, making this another excellent example of the lingering largess of his live recordings. Granted, at this point, Young has every reason to simply rely on his earlier endeavors in order to cap his career. The constant stream of archival offerings verifies that fact. (He even jokes about his relative lack of new material in a brief monologue at the end of the album.) Yet, Young remains as urgent, energized and vital as ever, and this current concert collection provides all the proof needed.