In the Absence of Truth

I had high hopes that this record would end up being my favorite Isis album, especially considering the band's stellar progression, but alas, I ended up disappointed. I wasn't expecting Panopticon II or Oceanic redux, all I was really expecting was an awesome piece of music, which this, really, is not, especially by Isis standards. After all, I pretty much love everything they’ve ever done, including the early EP’s, which I think are fabulous. In fact I really wish they would’ve done more in the style of their first two EP’s, though I certainly don’t expect them to and never judge new material on that basis. I like their newer style (except this record) just as much anyway. I’ve simply always felt they never fully explored their earlier tendencies. Anyway…

When listening to this, it just seems mediocre. Nearly every single song has parts I don't like (the only exception being Dulcinea—which also has a nice Tool ripoff. Something like that doesn’t normally bother me, unless it’s absurdly blatant, but with this bad of an overall album, it just piles on the downsides.). This is somewhat strange as I don't think there is a part I hate on Panopticon--maybe one I mildly dislike. For example, the song Firdous E Bareen is awesomely annoying, and at more than seven minutes it is not a brief interlude. I’m not generally a fan of instrumental music, but a few on an album with vocals are certainly fine. This one, however, the percussion bits fading in and out just drive me up a wall. Not to mention as far as instrumentals go, it’s pretty boring. Garden of Light, the closer, has an amazingly anti-climactic ending, Not in Rivers But in Drops starts off as if it’ll be the best track, but it just kind of fizzles out in the end. And on and on. The best song is probably Holy Tears, but that song really needed a rawer production job to be classed as a great song.

The vocals don't seem to fit quite as well either. Its not that I don't like his clean/harsh vocals, its just that on this album they don't seem to fit with the music the way they did in the past, like another instrument. But I think the biggest thing about this record is that a lot (most, in fact) of the heavy riffs are simply not very good. For starters, they are barely what you might call “heavy” riffs, and the intensity is not simply lacking, it just doesn’t exist. (Turner even said recently, talking about the new album (2009), that he felt they had lost their energy recently, that some of their recordings were too clean. I can only hope this is what he was referring to.) The heavy parts are, simply put, bad.

There are some really great parts, no really great songs. Everything seems almost average. I think the biggest thing that dooms this album is the non-heavy parts, the post-rock sections if you will. On Panopticon, those parts were always massive in intensity. On this album, they just seem to wallow, not really doing anything, not really interesting to listen to. Some parts are just boring and/or poorly written. I’m not sure how this happened, as on previous records the non-heavy parts are absolutely fantastic and really make the records great.

As a side note, I actually think I like the Melvins/Lustmord remix of Rivers/Drops better than most of the songs on this album as it seems to have a somewhat rawer feel, or at least more of an edge to it.

Frankly, if this were not Isis I don’t think I’d even be rating it this high.