In the Absence Of Truth

 The fourth full-length from Isis is something every post-rock fan has been impatiently waiting for and never dared to ask for out loud. LA – the Boston alliance of music shamans has, after a pretty fruitful run with a bunch of lesser-known labels, gone looking for shelter in the safe embrace of Ipecac Recordings, and so far Patton’s patronage has proven a winning formula for promoting rhythms and melodies that are anything but everyday.

It’s not Isis’ fault that, over all these long years of making music and endlessly reconstituting their own sound, they’ve become pretty unrecognizable to fans of the early Isis era. The flood of bands that were so taken with the inventive landscape of the whole album Oceanic and with Panopticon, released the year before last, that they had to cook up something similar themselves, grows by the day. The matrix, or maxim, of Isis’ further sonic development was set with exactly these two key albums, which we can use to measure the quality of the current work. Long songs that patiently wait for inert states of trance to develop have become a constant. The rhythms are organic. Turner’s vocals are fluid and dreamy, and the subject matter is fictional. “Nothing is True, Everything Is Permited” is the core idea, the undertone of the album.

A post-apocalyptic version of the meditative movement of the likes of TOOL – or, for the carefree, gently “chilled” crowd, the more fitting Massive Attack – has been given its metal equivalent. Bassist Jeff Caxide, guitarists Michael Gallagher and Aaron Turner, the other Aaron (Harris, Isis’ drummer) and ambient electro-guitar guru Bryant Clifford Meyer don’t leave you hanging in uncertainty on the new record either, but serve up the purest form of musical perfection per excellance. Isis still sound like only themselves. The one addition is an even deeper dynamic, while Turner’s vocals are clearer still, calmer, and even more melodic in that trademark melancholic way.

The album opens with ‘Wrist Of Kings’. Gentle intro. Organs whistling, tearing through a white-hot sky above the scorched field of the last battle. The guitars paint the landscape the way we recently heard it at a Red Sparowes show, their side-project, their out-of-wedlock child. The build-up in tempo and volume is set so that only the most patient can keep up with it. A sequence of three notes and its repetition becomes the basic mantra of mental liberation. After about two minutes an almost jazzy beat sneaks into the scheme, making it easier to picture the images from Turner’s dreams. The brilliance of a musical mastermind, where the influences of the band as a whole pour into one!

Next up is ‘Not In Rivers, But In Drops’, where the flowing rhythm of a TOOL intro appears before your eyes even more clearly. Deftones-esque ambient passages creep in, along with murmuring vocals that steal the solid ground of reality from under your feet even more thoroughly. The state of being stoned while fully lucid is already engraved in the basic intent of the meditation called Isis. Caxide paints fluidly, and the dialogue between three guitars and jazzy drums becomes a necessity, without which you couldn’t manage your next breath. Isis loom over you like remote yet ever-present gods, washing away every doubt with the blood of the blasphemers who claim that what comes out of the speakers isn’t a perfect feeling, music and mathematized passion.

‘Dulcinea’ continues the little drama of shadows and light, which they deliberately veil so you don’t glimpse the essence of total emptiness too soon. It’s a sophistication of form that justifies the falseness of the content. The listener finds themselves on the back of a dreamy young snake, which carries them away from the defining frame of space and time. Everything is illusion. Everything is a postulate of pure reason. Everything is the mind playing games with itself. Time and space don’t exist. It’s just a multiple orgasm that lasts infinitely long. The eruption of fury is only an echo from the farthest corners of the rebellious spirit.

‘Over Roots and Thorn’ is a pretty demonic chant of silence and a ratcheting up of tension. You wait for an attack that just doesn’t come. Somewhere around the two-and-a-half-minute mark the beast awakens. The riffs sound as if they were woven from streams of crystal water. The ambient wash carries on with no visible line between heaven and earth. The heavens have opened and, in dreams, translucent angels of fate have spread their long cold fingers over the world. Apparitions of smoke with no solid body. A perfect illusion. People with sewn-shut eyes, lulled into endless sleep, and Isis stand in for Hypnos, luring you into the sweet state of death and the endless continuation of annihilating reality. In places Isis recall what we praise in Mastodon, except they’ve woven into the basic circuitry their own vehemence for smashing radio-friendly song lengths.

‘1000 Shards’ breaks the vaults of the universe. So that, after deconstructing this world, you can fly off into interstellar space and sprinkle yourself with stardust. ‘All Out Of Time, All Into Space’ is a vivid portrayal of decentering, in which Isis take away from a person even the thing they cling to so fiercely. What remains is the creak of dismemberment and hollow dreams that are supposed to be life. You can feel a coldness and a suppressed anger, which this time, after the destruction, builds constructs into something new.

‘Holy Tears’ is probably the most melodic moment on the record, where the gods talk to you directly and show their uncompromising power through a wall of sonic might. The dialogue between the instruments stands out. The analog flirts with the digital in a perfectly natural way, and from behind the binary code of matter and annihilation the message remains that the re-constitution of reality is merely a game. It’s just one of the options, one we await like a supernova explosion.

The wicked mix of ‘Firdous E Bareen’ plays games with your mind and ears, with the percussion teasing you and the guitars lending a touch of fatefulness. It’s only a few restrained notes. The syntagm of complete fusion of unease with the chill of a post-apocalyptic touch is Isis’ basic suspense tool. The musicians play the role of Hitchcock, intending to shake you up when you least expect it. And the game is fun. There’s no denying that, minute by minute, this chant of a glamorous epic grows on you more and more, even if you haven’t memorized the lyrics.

And just like that, we’re at the final act. ‘Garden Of Light’ as the closing act of the album finishes where the beginning cut its first deep gash. Xylophone, floating drums and guitars conjure a landscape of the world over which the mists spread. The realization is right there in your palm. Bravo! You’ve caught your tail, the one you’ve been unsuccessfully chasing with your teeth for so long. Deus Sive Natura, the creating god, is only a product of your delusion that you’ve figured it all out, but that’s not the case. Nothing is so sacred that it couldn’t be doubted. And after the solipsistic insight, you can improve the world by mentally dismissing it, ceasing to create with your thoughts – only then do peace and tranquility set in.

In the Absence Of Truth isn’t an album you’d associate with tunes and catchy choruses. Nor is it an album after which you could automatically rattle off the track names without looking at the sleeve. But it is an album that, like humanity itself, opens up old doubts and questions about the divine. It offers optional solutions that would never sit entirely well in your palm. And the nine tracks that run past eight minutes carve a black hole in your head and mind, one you’d like to fill with anything at all, but you’ll never quite manage it. In that respect the album is untouchable. And that’s what makes the work perfect. Any change would wreck the internal balance. That’s the charm and the core of Isis’ magic. Forget individuals and forget shortcuts to insight. The road is epically long, and it’s the walking itself that gives it meaning. A phenomenal record that deserves your attention as someone who can listen holistically while also engaging that so-forgotten compass of inner intuition. In the Absence Of Truth is a record that easily rivals TOOL and may even surpass them!