Crustcake Reviews: Isis - Wavering Radiant [4/21/09; Ipecac]

by The WZA'd (Philadelphia)

The most common complaints about Isis usually involve the word “sleep.” As in: “Nah man, I just never got into Isis, they put me to sleep.” Of course, I would be lying by omission if I didn’t tell you that I have used “Hym” on Oceanic to lull me to sleep on long car rides. I never think of it as boring though – I just like how mellow the song is.

On Oceanic, Isis created soundscapes of strummed chords and screamed vocals, eliminating verse-chorus-verse structure. The LA quintet perfected a type of songwriting that ebbed and flowed, relying on dramatic, quiet/loud dynamics. Panopticon was much of the same. Somewhere around that time, every Isis copycat band this side of Rosetta started doing the same thing and taking themselves way too seriously.

But Isis have moved on. Wavering Radiant is musically denser than any of their other albums and is, by far, their best to date.

Even the band's vibe is different – conceptually, Isis has moved away from towers and mosquitoes and oceans and worms (or whatever was on the cover of In the Absence of Truth) and entered the realm of dreams. Here they flourish, trippier than ever. There are enough connections to older Isis – the distorted bass from Panopticon is sprinkled throughout and the intro to “Hand of the Host” seems like it could come right off that album. But quiet/loud? That’s gone. On “Stone to Wake a Serpent,” loudness comes in short bursts. It’s as if the band knew what their critics were saying and went, “oh yeah?”

What makes this album is the details. At the apex of the aforementioned song, a guitar screams in the background while Aaron Turner sings. The bass tone in the beginning of “20 Minutes/40 Years” sounds like something off Nine Inch Nails’ With Teeth, but turns into something more organic and beautiful. This isn’t an album about riffs – guitars (up to three at points, never sounding messy) dance around keyboard and bass lines while Turner alternates bellowing and screaming. On this song, it's drummer Aaron Harris who provides atmosphere. Now think that last part over.

This is still a metal album, though, and it rocks like one. The 10-minute epic “Threshold of Transformation” is filled with the heaviest sludge Isis could find in the ditch, though it emerges into something more melodic and evolves into the most moving song on the album.

Wavering Radiant isn't just good. It’s really good. And Isis know it too. Touring behind Radiant, Isis played nearly every song on the album at each show, leaving space for only a couple songs off past LPs. Live, it’s obvious these guys know they made a good record and that confidence is the bedrock of this album.

Reflecting their tendency to sweat the details, even the insides of the sleeves have artwork. In fact, it’s all covered in artwork – the only space for text is left on the front of the cover of the first disk. What the artwork actually depicts is… I can’t say. Stars? They seem to shimmer, like lights do when looked at underwater. And what about those weird tentacle-looking things?

But this is dreamland. It doesn’t have to make sense in the physical world. The abstract artwork complements the music yet still lets it speak for itself, as does the elegant simplicity of the whole package. This, my friends, is what is called “Artistic Vision.”


9/10 [Audible]
9/10 [Physical]


[Front Cover]


[Inside Spread]


[Covers for both disks, side 1]



[Covers for both disks, side 2]