Oceanic

Is 'sleepy' a valid thing for a piece of art to make you feel? Look, I understand that Isis' goal is not to be the heaviest band in the world. I have perspective; I know I'm not listening to Devourment. But it's beside the point; I don't think any matter of style really justifies how oppressively still this music is. I'm at a loss as to what actually happens in this music (which to me seems to be incredibly simple despite what others say); it seems to just wander a huge amount without ever arriving at a destination.

This is ostensibly metal but it just feels like post-rock to me, which is sort of curious since 'Panopticon', the following album, was supposed to be one of the instrumental releases in establishing the post-metal style. But shit, calling this metal would be tricky for me; Isis doesn't really have any riffs, drive, aggression, or heaviness. They're loud, occasionally; boy do they love to be loud. It seems that literally every big, climactic moment on this album is caused by volume increases, and Isis mercilessly beats the crescendo trope of post-rock to death song after song. It's as though they have no idea of how else to create excitement for the listener except through slow, gradual buildups of volume. Visionary artists my ass.

Post-rock is constructed sort of like ambient music: small, simple elements are slowly piled on top of each other and selectively subtracted to creating a shifting wall of sound that changes in nearly imperceptible ways. A lot of ambient music is made with electronics, which naturally creates something that's less varied note-to-note than physical instruments; it's cool, I get how it is. Isis, however, has no such excuse. On 'Oceanic', they have the bad tendency to repeat themselves verbatim for long stretches of time, with simple, five note guitar lines (can't really call them riffs) looping seemingly endlessly and not driving the songs anywhere. Most of the variation seems to come from the drums, since Aaron Harris apparently has a fetish for randomly placing bass drum notes from measure to measure. Apart from that, nothing really happens; it's just a collection of meandering, mostly clean guitar lines that rarely add up to anything in the end.

The problem with 'Oceanic' is the one-dimensionality of its songwriting. Do you not anticipate that Isis is going to go for a crescendo as a climax rather than trying a different construction? Really now, don't you? Considering the vast similarity between tracks on this album, this is an inexcusable fault for the record. Do you have any idea how tiring it gets listening to Isis churn through low-volume chug riffs, clean guitar noodling, and the occasional brash crescendo over the course of a fucking hour with basically no variation demonstrated? I really don't understand how this can be revered as a complex, fascinating release when nearly every turn the songs take can be anticipated from miles away. Well, the answer is obvious: metalheads don't listen to post-rock, so when confronted with the conventions of a genre they've never heard before, they immediately spring to 'genius' as the explanation.

Oddly enough, I really enjoy 'Panopticon'- in fact, it's the only Isis album I really like. It's really the perfect balance of the band's aimless noodling and a more focused sense of songwriting. 'Oceanic', on the other hand, just staggers around in the former without ever evidencing a greater goal for their songs. Frankly the post-metal genre has become to oversaturated over the past few years that you could probably walk into an FYE and trip over twenty better albums than this one. And if you don't like it, start off quiet on your crash cymbal and then hit it harder.