The music of ISIS is a suitable metaphor for their twelve-year career: patient, meticulous, fraught with tension and gradually building towards an apex of seismic proportions. From the hypnotically bludgeoning down-tuned riffs of their early years to the gracefully sprawling passages on their pivotal sophomore album Oceanic and continuing through the intricate rhythmic textures and increased melody of 2006's In The Absence of Truth, ISIS have successfully navigated the process of growing and evolving without disavowing their initial vision.

There is no consensus among ISIS' cult-like fan base as to which album serves as the ultimate document of their art. Each record is a piece in the puzzle. Consequently, to brand their latest offering, Wavering Radiant, as the pinnacle of their achievements would be folly. Yet it's a tempting proclamation. The factors that defined ISIS in the past are still present, but the band manipulates its tactics and strategies with a refined sense of purpose and a heightened knack for nuance. They've extrapolated on the polar nature of their music. It's simultaneously their most challenging and accessible music to date. While Wavering Radiant is finely structured, dynamically varied, and melodically developed, it's also unpredictable, expansive, and densely layered. Every ISIS endeavor is an active listening experience -- requiring an aficionado's ear for subtlety and a scholar's grasp of the larger picture, but Wavering Radiant manages to provide instant gratification while also harnessing the slow burn of a classic, revealing the full extent of its mysteries only after repeated listens.

Rare is the record that finds the individual players as compelling as the sum of their parts, and ISIS has achieved just that. While the monolithic guitars of Aaron Turner and Michael Gallagher remain a primary fixture in the ISIS soundscape, the dueling instrumentalists continue to develop and expand upon their interplay. Together they evoke the emotional range of Wagner: brooding, triumphant, vengeful, and morose. Aaron Turner's vocals are more prominent than ever. But in keeping with the egalitarian nature of their art, the vocals continue to serve as flourishes rather than a focal point. Clifford Meyer's multi-instrumentation duties play a stronger role this time around as well. His atmospheric textures are still present, but he unlocks new horizons for the band with Fender Rhodes, electric organ, and the occasional psychedelic guitar lead. Jeff Caxide's bass playing still covers a broad spectrum, from providing melodic counterpoints to the guitars to conjuring Peter Hook's chorused bass leads. Wavering Radiant finally gives Caxide his due, allowing his various approaches to further accentuate the music's shifting moods while anchoring the melodies into the formidable rhythm section. And here drummer Aaron Harris once again shows his expansive depth in technique and ability. From esoteric tabla passages to authoritative syncopated punctuations, Harris transcends the basic metronomic function of the drum set to imbue the percussive element of the band with a heightened sense of drama and power. Wavering Radiant finds every component of the ISIS armory coming into equal play.

Grandiose without being over-indulgent, epic without compromising focus, ISIS have resurrected the art of prioritizing the album over the individual songs. Wavering Radiant, though divided into seven pieces, is essentially one composition. It's difficult to listen to the record without feeling the ghost of an era in rock music where musicians weren't afraid to take chances, weren't concerned with pandering to short attention spans, and weren't compelled compact their material into a radio-friendly format. With producer Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Melvins, Enslaved) behind the boards, the recording displays a sonic range and tonal depth in perfect step with the broad range of the band's capabilities. This is an audiophile's dream: rich in headphone candy, goose-bump inducing in its crescendos, majestic in its beauty, humbling in its devastating power. If radio still exists in 30 years, Wavering Radiant is the kind of record that obsessive DJs will play in its entirety during their graveyard shifts. But the huddled mass of ISIS enthusiasts are already celebrating its arrival.

On ISIS' third full-length, the unblinking eye of counter-insurgency is exposed with mesmerizing stereophonic clarity. Ultra dynamic sound-design takes on the heighhtened dimesions of institutionally-induced anxiety, and the carefully constructed artifice of an omniscient predatory apparatus becomes the paradigm of surveillance culture. Meanwhile, panoptic cognizance, while ostensibly the outmost of all Orwellian implications, lends itself to far more insidious applications: Just as hidden crosshairs hold sway over every prison yard, to see everything is to know all.

Recent re-press of this sought-after 2xLP after the first press sold out in less than one week.The logical expansion of ISIS' multiple personalities yield "In The Absence Of Truth", their latest monster full-length. It only makes sense that the 'atmospheric' parts are even more haunting (yet, uplifting) and the 'heavy' parts are even more brutal and crushing. However, it's hardly an album of polar opposites, with the fluidity only achieved by a band who's been consistently developing like this for nearly a decade now. The increased amount of actual singing really makes a difference on the more mellow moments, but widespread experimentation with new elements reaches far beyond the vocals here. Appropriate usage of unique tones, leads and overall surprising song-structures culminate with nine tracks of ISIS' most impressive work to date. "In The Absence Of Truth" really is an astounding album, with a maturity displayed that leaps from their past into amazing uncharted waters of heaviness. Robotic Empire is honored to supply this gatefold, double-LP vinyl edition of ISIS' latest masterpiece.

Boston's remarkable five-piece band Isis answers the long-standing call for a more metallic musical counterpart to Slint and For Carnation, and succeeds without holding back on the metal or playing too bluntly to finesse the art-rock. The roaring opener, "SGNL>05 (Final Transmission)," is a monumental waltz that flickers between taut Shellac-style riffing and big monolithic Slayer triplets, glued together by the dank, black metal touches of later Darkthrone. "Divine Mother (The Tower Crumbles)" is like Master of Puppets-era Metallica covering Jesus Lizard, two of the original influences of Slint metal. "Beneath Flow" is a brief, mysterious, clanking exploration that leads into the tempered doomscape of "Constructing Towers," the powerful orchestral centerpiece of SGNL>05. In the midst of turning melancholy, and ambling into a very original investigation of heaviness, Isis are light on emotional frames of reference, but a pretty and poised remix of "Celestial (Signal Fills the Void)" by Justin Broadrick of Godflesh saves the day, organizing the battering drums, acres of guitar, and voices into a repetitive drone-metal version of a hit single. --Ian Christe

Japanese edition of the rock act's 2001 album includes a five track mini album featuring 'SGNL>05 (Final Transmission)', 'Divine Mother (The Tower Crumbles)', 'Beneath Below', 'Constructing Towers' & 'Celestial (Signal Fills The Void)' (Remix by Justin K Broadrick). Double digipak.

Live I 09.23.03 by ISIS

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Celestial by ISIS

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

In The Fishtank" is an ongoing project of Konkurrent, an independent music distributor in the Netherlands. Chosen musicians are given two days studio time and freedom to do whatever they like musically. On this edition, while both bands are known for their love of metal and post-hardcore with an experimental and spherical approach, they not only show these skills here, but they also add an impressively high level of purity, roominess, and emotion. It's the analog warmth that makes the songs tender, organic, imminent, and fragile.