O, Mighty Isis

Isis
Panopticon

Ipecac 57

Let’s stop thinking of Isis as just a heavy metal band with ambition. Emerging in the late ‘90s from Boston’s fertile post-hardcore scene, the five piece band (Aaron Turner on guitar and vocals, bassist Jeff Caxide, drummer Aaron Harris, guitarist Mike Gallagher, and utility player B. C. Meyer on electronics, keyboards, etc.) defined its sonic territory at the intersection of post-Melvins drones, doom metal, and dark, Mogwai-indebted soundscapes. Since the chug-chug intensity of early EPs like Mosquito Control and The Red Sea, Isis have steadily developed their sound by incorporating first a very intense focus on layered sound and tempi (heard on their first full-length Celestial) and later a powerful emotional undercurrent (on 2002’s awesome Oceanic). With this new release, they have shifted and moved forward once again.

These dark times are proving rich ones for American art and music, and it’s somewhat refreshing to note that the metal and hardcore subcultures – which of course are nowhere near as neatly contained as the monikers suggest – are becoming overtly political. The new Lamb of God is a blast of fury directed at the Bush administration; Mastodon’s amazing new full-length is an interpretation of Moby Dick, whose parables of madness and obsession seem chillingly apposite these days; and even Neurosis’ gorgeous The Eye of Every Storm suggests, through its world-weary lyricism and heaviness, that dignity is achievable despite all. I namecheck these other bands both because they deserve to be heard and because they get to something fundamental to Isis’ music: the slow harvesting of beauty and resolve from a deadening culture. Indeed, the quintet has always been interested in density and in the sheer force of sound. Beneath the chugging mega-riffs, the howling distortion, and the laminations of sound, there is always a vibrant passion, a desire to break free of confines. With this, it seems significant that Isis is now extending that aesthetic in an exploration of a different kind of density, that of a political culture that continues to choke off expression, dialogue, and dissent. Riffing on Michel Foucault’s popularization of the category of the panopticon, Isis explores the juxtaposition between their sonic density and that of the tightening grip of a surveillance society.

Perhaps tellingly, the album opens with the kind of sweeping crescendi that, on Oceanic, usually resulted from patient, methodical long form jamming. Yet this is a somewhat deceptive beginning for here Isis places its emphasis on undistorted guitars, on glittering textures, on open sonic vistas that combine neo-psychedelic detail with the kind of hypnotic repetition they specialize in. (Oh yes, and Aaron Turner, usually one of the gruffest barkers out there, sings a whole lot on this disc.) One of the best places to sample this mature synthesis is on the long, sweeping “Backlit.” Of course, Turner has long been exploring these ideas in side projects like Old Man Gloom, House of Low Culture, and Lotus Eaters. But it’s brought out wonderfully on Panopticon. The near fragility of “In Fiction” demonstrates a restraint and a lyricism that the band probably couldn’t have pulled off earlier. But thankfully there is still a ton of monster riffage and raw power here, with Turner barking, sounds swirling, and Harris’ sinewy beats the axis mundi of Isis’ universe of heavy syncopation. Over the course of seven songs in an hour, the band patiently build each track (and they have long seemed to me to possess a real architectural sense, a gift for structure, development, and density), with the spooky “Syndic Calls” particularly effective.

Without sacrificing any of their virtues, Isis has shifted around the basic elements of their sound and privileged melody (or, ironically given their album’s image and concerns, they have freed melody up), in a way that somehow undergirds the ubiquitous heaviness. There is more of a reflectiveness here, as compared to the quiet angst of Oceanic, but Panopticon is equally as powerful a record.

~ Jason Bivins