The Works of Drew Tewksbury, a Multimedia Journalist

Album Reviews

Isis- Wavering Radiant

By Drew Tewksbury ⋅ June 13, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

M
etalheads employ the finest tools of musical vivisection. They carefully dissect a song, examine its parts, then catalogue it using what logicians call a material conditional. Example: If a vocalist mimics vomiting over blastbeats, then it qualifies as grindcore. If the vocalist barfs about eating human flesh, then it’s goregrind. But the system breaks down with Isis, the prog-metal band whose melodic, slowly burning musical movements swell into symphonies of combustion. On Wavering Radiant, the band continues to test the auspices of what constitutes metal. Their previous effort, In the Absence of Truth, explored the more melodic side of rock, relying on intricate guitar play and airy drum lines. Wavering Radiant takes the melodic guitar work that has defined Isis for the last decade and lays it over more traditionally metal beats. The double-bass kicks are back, but the album still explores the introspective spaces that makes the band more akin to Massive Attack and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The eight-and-a-half-minute anthem “Ghost Key,” begins only with softly rolling drums, crispy minimalist guitar, and bass that wouldn’t stand out in a new wave song. Then the weight of vocalist Aaron Turner’s gruff barks and tsunami guitar washes away the simple intro with extreme heaviness. Like most Isis songs, “Ghost Key” alternates between these moments of quiet and clamor, buttressing order upon disorder, and amplifying each when shored upon one another. Isis could be a much more accessible band if Turner abandoned the guttural screams, but if he did, Isis may cease being metal. Metal fans, after all, tend to want to be on the fringe enjoying a genre that is, by nature, inaccessible to some people. still, Isis continues their practice of hard-edged music that is inclusive and undeniably interesting.

By Drew Tewksbury

from Musica Univeralis Column for Flaunt Magazine, Issue 103 2009

View the printable PDF from Flaunt magazine

*