Isis - In the Absence of Truth
MusicMash Rating: not rated yet
Pitchfork Media Rating: 8.3
Isis's elegant fourth full-length, In
the Absence of Truth, comes packed with surprises. As
might be expected following their
2004 breakthrough and subsequent big-time tour with Tool, the Los Angeles quintet expands the
template solidified (and some would say mastered) on Oceanic and pushed to the outer limits amid Panopticon's sloshy trenches.
In
the Absence of Truth goes further than those albums, but without ditching the signature elements--
sharp, delayed/chorused guitar notes (the underwater bunker sound), swirling and
ambient
keyboards, crisp and dynamic drum and bass, Aaron Turner's meditational
chants and drowning-man growls. Everything's more expansive and exploratory here, and
fresh
off Blood Mountain,
Isis's regular recordist Matt Bayles buffs each of the nine tracks with
some hazy gauze, lodging a truly sleek, sumptuous, fathomless
recording.
In fact, the set's so finely wound that on the first few
listens it seemed like the steady diet of Tool had perhaps transformed Isis into
an emaciated, innocuous version of their older selves. Not at all,
kneejerks-- these
songs just require close (and repeated) listening to initiate an
unravelling (It took me two months before I felt the background music
become total immersion). The band's never been ham-fisted, but In the Absence offers
fewer crowd-pleasing quiet-to-loud dynamics-- though they are there-- and there are
plenty of unexpected inversions: Excellent opener "Wrist of
Kings" displays a three-minute tension-grabbing intro that slows and
swivels instead of cresting, allowing Turner to soar, almost a whisper,
over math-y drums. Smashing expectations, a few minutes later the crush
and vocal growl emerge, long after the initial build has recoiled.
Isis
continue to embrace the epic-- this is their longest outing, the
majority of songs in the seven/eight-minute range. There are also techy
upgrades. Injected with a dose of croon, Turner's broadened his vocal
approach (and Bayles
mixes the growls more smoothly). He seems less afraid to just sing.
Sure, he
gets a tad alt at the start of "Holy Tears", but the song finds
redemption in its complex arpeggios, monster outro, and pretty,
breathless keys. Or, to see a more interesting moment in his
development, as well as Bayles' increased array of vocal effects, look
at the
psychedelically waterlogged "1000 Shards", which builds to a sloshy
mosh part and some powerfully hoarse scowls, before sinking into
whispers and the instrumental set piece "All Out of Time, All Into
Space"'s distorted wind, flange, and aquatic firestorms.
Not every expansion's a hit, however. Named for
Hassan-i-Sabbah's garden, "Firdous E Bareen" is a montage that
ostensibly approximates the feel of an acolyte coming to in the mountainous
faux-Eden, thinking he'd died and been reborn: dub percussion, electro,
backwards spinning tape, tribalism, bird sounds, acoustic
strums, sitar, hand drums collide. It's a tad like Isis from the
Oceanic Remixes / Reinterpretations album, though they're adding the extraneous elements themselves. Recovering
the gravity and beauty of the rest of the album, the final, longest track,
"Garden of Light", starts with a pleasing languor and moves to
that blue-tinted Panopticon rock, before ushering in an uproarious
Disintegration shoe-gaze-- Heaven truly attained? For those who chaff
at these sorts of shoe-gazer references, listen to the last few minutes
of "Garden of Light" and then download some Ride. I'll wait here a few minutes.
Conceptually,
Hassan-i-Sabbah, the 11th/12th Century Persian mystic, shows up
throughout these pieces. Pig Destroyer (and countless other rockers)
have recently reminded us, "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted,"
but it
is interesting to watch how far (and personally) Turner takes it. Plus,
folks usually
discover the idea with William S. Burroughs-- Turner unearthed it in
Mark Danielewski's postmodern staple, House of Leaves. There
is some WSB: "All Out of Time, All Into Space" shows most famously, to this young punk geek at least, in "The
Last Words of Hassan Sabbah"...
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