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Isis
Oceanic
[ipecac; 2002]
Rating: 9.1
Aaron Turner was already known around Boston by the time Isis started getting attention; there were widespread rumors that his record label Hydra Head was fueled by a large inheritance, and that its lavish, first-rate packaging and distribution were ostentatious examples of fantastic personal wealth. I've never bothered to determine the truth or falsity of this rumor, because, in addition to running an independent label as artful, consistent, and frankly slick as I've seen since Sub Pop, Turner fronts the best heavy metal band to emerge in almost as long.
As mid-80s hardcore punk began drawing from metal, the lines blurred and a hybrid genre, simply called "hardcore", emerged. This brief exploration was almost immediately co-opted by the same bullheaded, pseudo-political meandering that brought punk down, but a handful of great experiments made it through-- most importantly for our heroes in Isis, the first few Snapcase and Iceburn records. Their totalitarian design approach felt like a nod to Iceburn, whose Hephaestus LP counts among the most innovative and artistically solid statements made during 1990s hardcore. After two attention-getting EPs that meandered as often as they delivered (another Iceburn staple), Isis released Celestial, a wall of screaming, soaring post-hardcore guitars whose presence recalled the Melvins's opus Houdini, and whose persistent, almost hidden melodic undercurrent harkened back to the glory days of late-80s Sonic Youth.
With Celestial, Isis delivered one of the best releases of 2000, but it took word of mouth to find an audience, and like many critically lauded bands, they're releasing a follow-up to a superb record many in their audience have only recently discovered. The SGNL>05 EP offered two good jams recorded while touring, but their fans want Celestial II, and they want it now.
Oceanic is an album that's at once more precise and more exploratory than the predecessor it upstages. Each song is an anthem on par with the three finest on Celestial ("Deconstructing Towers", "Glisten" and the title track), but their song remains the same: a huge chorus, and many lengthy breakdowns. Where Oceanic succeeds is in its ability to hold your ear during those lulls, which is something the band could never do with such ease or consistency until now. On the first track, "The Beginning and the End" and "From Sinking", the breakdown jams-- with Cure licks by-way of Neurot fellows Tarantel-- are as engaging as the explosive choruses we've been prepped for.
"The Beginning and the End" also features formless female vocals, the moans of a siren in the background. Later, on "Weight", we find our previously muted Nereid ringing clear. The song stretches over ten minutes, and it's one-time Dirt Merchants singer Maria Christopher (who briefly resurfaced in a much darker band called 27 last year) that ensures you'll never lose interest in the song's onslaught where you may have in the past; her nervy, echoing chorus at its close is a challenge to both heavy metal and female vocalists, so often relegated to stereotypical modes of expression. The chorale of organs that ring on after "Weight" will have you imagining scenes not unlike Oceanic's cover.
Isis is one of the few heavy metal bands recording without regard for convention, and since Tool's debut, few have succeeded in such breathtaking fashion. Turner-- who's invariably screamed at the top of his lungs to this point-- actually sings on the record's closer, "Hym". Always with an ear for the industrial drone dramatized by Swans and Skinny Puppy in the 80s, and kept alive by Neurosis (who Turner has known since starting Hydra Head), Isis have graduated from their status as the best dirge orchestra around, consolidating a number of disparate sounds to create a dynamic far more evocative than mere loud-soft-loud repetition: these are caterwauls offset by meditation.
Isis
Panopticon
[ipecac; 2004]
Rating: 8.4
When people mention "heavy metal," I still kneejerk and jump back to ultra-specific childhood associations: The Bon Jovi/Mötley Crüe diptych in my sister's purple room, watching "Headbangers Ball" with a pack of Party Mix and decorating my first shiny, black, mall-bought guitar with Slayer stickers, the trashy Maiden fans in my neighborhood with their toothpick legs, seeing pre-suck-ass Metallica in a mid-sized club with a friend of mine who wore a fake wig so he could feel more the part. These memories are just the tip of the Viking's iceberg; the stuff has leaked into my adulthood, especially via first-generation Norwegian black metal, Mastodon, High On Fire, the Polish rockers who ran my borrowed van into a Los Angeles parking deck last spring, and-- mightiest of all-- the glorious slow-release sprawl of Isis.
An odd monster, the Boston quintet has toured with Ipecac rap artist Dälek; had their music tweaked on a series of 12-inches by (among others) label head Mike Patton, Godflesh's Justin Broadrick, Fennesz, Thomas Koner, and Khanate's James Plotkin; and have played both Mogwai's stage at 2004's All Tomorrow's Parties in East Sussex, England, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. They're not your mulletted uncle's bar band. Their album Oceanic was all dark grandeur and waterlogged heaviness, and those qualities define the seven tracks on their follow up Panopticon. Even more epic and swirling than Oceanic, Isis's third full-length combines their velvety, slow avant-metal with Godspeed marathons and stately Ride-style shoegazing.
Panopticon shares the crystalline production Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Pearl Jam) leant to Oceanic-- the drums and vocals are submerged, the riffs intricately monolithic-- but unlike on earlier efforts, the spare electronics are more seamlessly woven with the other instruments. A stronger record than its predecessor, Panopticon pummels but harnesses its sounds to a well-honed, diaphanous template.
In the grand spirit of over-the-top metal, Isis named the album after Michel Foucault's take on of Jeremy Bentham's concept of the panopticon; the tracks are thematically connected via Foucault's Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Because the lyrics are submerged in the mix they're fairly impenetrable, but Isis quote heavily from the French philosopher in the liner notes to make sure listeners don't think they chose the title at random: "The Panopticon is a machine for disassociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen." (See also: The satellite spy cam photos decorating the album.) Considering the light/dark of the Patriot Act's ubiquitous surveillance, Panopticon feels more relevant than the science fiction of Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime.
Isis's instrumentation also evokes a sense of creeping voyeurism. Astute track placement adds to the slowly building tidal, trance-like rush: individual pieces blend over and flood to the next. With a shadowy sense of repetition-- comparisons to Neurosis and the Melvins make sense-- the shortest track is 6:47 and the longest just under 10 minutes. "Backlit" starts with a delicate intro and stuck-in-the-well melodies before ultimately dam-breaking with gruff whirlpools; the distortion then ducks for cover, allowing a slow, clear bass line, percussion, and cascading arpeggios to bubble to the surface. Such complex dynamics overtake each new wave.
I remember in high school when a scruffy English teacher told me the word "awesome" should be saved for snow-capped mountain peaks not an AC/DC concert. I still don't agree with his Bob Ross-like language mangling-- both "awesome" and the equally 80s-rooted colloquilism "triumphant" are apt descriptions of Panopticon's intricacies. Plus, not to rain on Sir Shakespeare's parade: I grew up in swampy, dank New Jersey and have always preferred the angularity of flat, burnt-out fields to the obviousness of your purple mountains majesty. But for fans of such old-school sublime, Isis connect these overstated zero-oxygen heights with sludgy, brackish small-town waters, creating stellar classical music for kids with bad teenage mustaches-- and those of us who empathize with them.
