ISIS - Mosquito Control/The Red Sea/Celestial/SGNL>05/Oceanic/Panopticon (2010) (7CD+1DVD Box Set)

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ISIS - Mosquito Control/The Red Sea/Celestial/SGNL>05/Oceanic/Panopticon (2010) (7CD+1DVD Box Set)

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Although rooted heavy metal and the punk/hardcore aesthetic, Isis' music relies just as heavily on ambience, atmosphere, and tone as it does complexity and aggression. Not so much a band per se as a musical collective, the members of the Boston-based quintet layer their compositions with feedback, power chords, quiet/loud dynamics, and vocals that are sometimes shouted, frequently screamed, and occasionally sung. The band was formed by Hydra Head Records owner Aaron Turner, who was hoping to combine the minimalism of Earth and the Melvins with the experimentalism of Godflesh, backed by the depth and power of the band's most obvious musical counterpart, Neurosis. It was the union of Turner with bassist Jeff Caxide and powerhouse drummer Aaron Harris that formed the core of the Isis project in 1997. The band recorded a demo that year with guitarist Randy Larson, garnering the attention of Escape Artist Records.

With noisemaker Chris Mereshuk on keyboards/samples and minus Larson, the band recorded the The Mosquito Control EP at God City Studios in 1998, establishing Isis as a band with artistic vision and conceptual foresight. Former Cast Iron Hike guitarist Mike Gallagher joined the lineup in time for a tour with Converge and Cavity, just as Mereshuk exited and was replaced by Agorophobic Nosebleed's Jay Randall. In 1999, Isis released an EP titled The Red Sea through Second Nature on both 8" vinyl and CD. Randall exited the group shortly thereafter and was replaced by Cliff Meyer, and Isis subsequently toured with Cave In that summer before supporting Neurosis – who had become admirers of the group – that winter.

In 2000, Isis produced their masterwork, the Celestial opus, which built upon the promise of the EP releases while expanding the band's scope to include more warmth and melody than its decidedly brutal predecessors. The band toured relentlessly in its support with the likes of the Dillinger Escape Plan, Candiria, and Burn It Down, releasing a follow-up of material from the Celestial sessions through Neurosis' own Neurot Recordings in 2001. Dubbed SGNL>05, the EP expanded the conceptual and musical threads of Celestial, complete with a remix by one of the band's heroes, Godflesh's electronic wizard Justin Broadrick.

Oceanic became the band's breakthrough record, receiving positive reviews upon its release in 2002. The follow-up effort, Panopticon, appeared two years later, while the two-CD remix collection Oceanic: Remixes/Reinterpretations landed in 2005. One year later, the band collaborated with the Scottish pop band Aereogramme for the 14th volume of the Konkurrent label's In the Fishtank series. Isis then released their next full-length album, In the Absence of Truth, before touring alongside Tool, whose guitarist Adam Jones opted to join Isis in the studio upon the tour's completion. Jones lent his instrumental prowess to two songs, both of which appeared on the band's 2009 album Wavering Radiant.

In 2010, Isis announced their decision to break up, and later that year they played their last show in Montreal. Though the band was done, a split EP with the Melvins featuring unrleased tracks from the Wavering Radiant sessions would appear later that year. Isis' final release, the sprawling rarites and demos compilation Temporal, appeared late in 2012.

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ISIS - Mosquito Control/The Red Sea/Celestial/SGNL>05/Oceanic/Panopticon (2010) (7CD+1DVD Box Set)

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With this EP, their second release, Isis starts really developing their own style of dense, down-tempo hardcore sludge metal with electronic accents, possessed screaming vocals, and a generally bleak atmosphere. Their songs tend to be on the long side – between four and ten minutes apiece – and in addition to that, they are clearly meant to flow together as part of a start-to-finish listening experience. (The conceptual feel of this EP is also highlighted by the lyrics, which use mosquito/insect references as a metaphor for a failed relationship.) "Hive Destruction" showcases the band's riff-writing abilities at their best and is arguably the highlight here, but the whole EP is solid and should please anyone into this band.

Isis' first official release, this 1999 EP shows off a few different facets of the band's hardcore/doom/sludge/metal style, which at this stage was already pretty impressive despite not yet having fully developed to the point it would on subsequent efforts. From the hateful screaming and dense guitar/bass sludge of "Charmicarmicarmicat Shines to Earth" to the pummeling riffs and downshifting grooves of "The Minus Times" and on through the discordant guitars and more stretched-out song structure of "Red Sea," the band's influences (some of which are plainly acknowledged in the liner notes) show through pretty clearly: the Melvins, Earth, Bastard Noise, Eyehategod, Soilent Green, Neurosis, Coalesce, etc. That it is to say, Isis is drawing on a who's who list of underground heavy-music gurus, and if this EP feels a little bit more like them "doing their homework" than a later album like Celestial does, it still outshines the work of many of their peers. The CD version of The Red Sea contains 21 minutes of additional, non-filler quality material taken from a 1998 demo, bringing the disc's total length up to 36 minutes. Thus, the CD is an especially good deal for Isis fans, though it should be of some interest to fans any of the above-mentioned groups, too.

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ISIS - Mosquito Control/The Red Sea/Celestial/SGNL>05/Oceanic/Panopticon (2010) (7CD+1DVD Box Set)

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Celestial is Isis' first full-length after two EPs, The Red Sea and Mosquito Control, and it shows their already fairly mature sludgecore style in full swing. Those earlier EPs proved that they already knew how to rock hard, but Celestial, for the first time, also shows off the band's feel for dynamics and for less-aggressive, quieter ways of getting their point across (including a more effective and advanced use of electronic/noise elements). There has always been as much despair as anger in frontman Aaron Turner's sandpaper screams, and listening to the clean-toned guitar intro on the mostly instrumental "C.F.T. (New Circuitry and Continued Evolution)," it's clear that this much is also true about the band's music in general. At the same time, tracks such as "Gentle Time" and "Swarm Reigns (Down)" are as hypnotically heavy as anything the band has done up to this point, with Turner's vocals sounding especially vicious on the latter song. The songs here clock in mostly in the six-to-eight-minute range and rely on a lot of repetitive guitar figures and rhythms, most in the same slow-to-medium tempo range, and as a result the album might sound a little same-y from track to track the first few times around. Given time, though, the details and nuances begin to show through, with the album as a whole taking on an almost epic feel. This is Isis' best work and a strong full-length debut.

From the intriguing opening sound textures of SGNL>05, one wouldn't imagine that this gentle stream would evolve into a grand work of nu-metal mastery. Here, Isis weaves a beautiful tapestry of lilted piano set deep into the mix of a windswept field recording, but it doesn't take long for the band to turn the world on its ear. SGNL>05, a five-track EP, is the extension of the earlier Celestial record. Lead vocalist and guitarist Aaron Turner's growl may sound cliché in this form, but SGNL>05 quickly proves that it isn't the work of some bored, depressed high school band. Rather, it's an intensely emotional and intelligent piece of theatrical metal music. Tribal influences leak in on "Divine Mother" as the sounds are drawn out in epic proportions. Synthesizers flit about in the background and noise paints the rest of the very stormy picture. The seething guitars of Turner and Mike Gallagher trudge onward in a jarring, direct, and tight fashion. Though tracks like "Beneath Below" and "Constructing Towers" do tend to get a bit repetitive, the album on the whole is quite succinct and impacting. Rarely do industrial rock records take listeners on such a journey as this. Sounds ebb and flow, creating lush textures, only to be met with the most excruciating instrumentation that eventually culminates in a beautiful, multi-layered ambient recording. That final track, a remix of the original "Celestial (Signal Fills the Void)" by Justin K. Broadrick (of Godflesh), serves as a darkly mechanical ending to this fine EP

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ISIS - Mosquito Control/The Red Sea/Celestial/SGNL>05/Oceanic/Panopticon (2010) (7CD+1DVD Box Set)

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Oceanic is the next logical step for Isis after the ugly, grandiose Celestial, the Aaron Turner-led outfit's second full-length looking simultaneously inward and outward, reaching into the nether regions of outer space while still keeping its feet firmly earthbound. Yes, it's an ambitious record, one that isn't immediately consumed and digested – rather, it consumes and digests the listener with grand and hypnotic waves of sound. Songs blur together as aggressive, post-hardcore guitar riffery trades with lengthy, meditative bouts of electronic exploration, a technique that would result in plodding, pretentious mush in less capable hands. Instead, Oceanic successfully mirrors the dense, unimaginable power of its namesake, combining the minimalist metallic art of Godflesh with the bipolar mood swings and Black Sabbath muscle of West Coast brethren Neurosis. Turner's deathcore growl-shouts serve to puncture the instrumental tension that balloons slowly and painstakingly inflates throughout the album's 63 minutes, with ex-Dirt Merchants singer Maria Christopher occasionally drifting hazily into the arrangements. "Weight," at nearly 11 minutes, doesn't necessarily move as much as it evolves toward its goal, starting with lazy, but purposeful, melodic whale songs before logically concluding with Christopher's repetitive dub vocal and a droning organ suggesting spiritual rebirth. Only Isis could get away with writing hardcore hymns about the inevitability of elemental forces and pull it off with such conviction and attention to detail. The album may initially seem to exist in hazy head space, but clarity comes with further submergence, assuming you're willing to lay back and float, letting the water take you into both conscious and subconscious realms. Oceanic is a masterfully complex symphony of majestic noise and melody, an all-consuming trip into the earth and mind that defies genre and, often, description – simply put, a triumph.

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ISIS - Mosquito Control/The Red Sea/Celestial/SGNL>05/Oceanic/Panopticon (2010) (7CD+1DVD Box Set)

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If the glacial dynamics of previous metal and hardcore abstractions Celestial and Oceanic didn't prove that Isis was a heavy band in every sense, then Panopticon should do the trick. The title comes from 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham's prison design, which was later referenced by Michael Foucault in the 20th century. The idea is that a centrally placed guard or watcher can keep track of a large number of prisoners, and it excited Bentham and concerned Foucault. Heavy stuff for a metal band, huh? Both are quoted in the liner notes, bookended by aerial industrial photos laying out society's open sprawl. It fits perfectly with the epic music on the disc itself, which is as angular as post-rock forefathers Slint and as cosmically expansive as Neurosis, yet closer to the intensity of hardcore than either of them. Panopticon has the same cagey wall of noise as Oceanic, although the end product here is a little more polished. Aaron Turner is still howling and growling, but he's less reluctant to actually sing, just as the music is more inclined to stretch out into Pink Floyd's velvet atmospherics, which were a part of Oceanic, too, but just not as pronounced as they are here. Turner's lyrics are impenetrable, buried in the mix, but when they do pop through the haze of guitars and electronics they're appropriately weighty and tied to the omniscient paranoia of the title.

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