Isis
In The Absent Of Truth

It's already been two years since that masterpiece known as 'panopticon' ??

It feels like yesterday when it was released and gifted me that hour of celestial and beautiful music... And it also feels like yesterday when 'oceanic' came out...

Isis manage the difficult task of not making you feel the days and years that separate you from each of their new works because if you listen to one of their CDs, you always discover something new... something you hadn't noticed before... That's why their last two albums, the ones mentioned above, can be defined as true masterpieces of today's metal/rock. Coming back to the present, I don't hide a certain trepidation for the CD in question, knowing three months in advance about its supposed release at the end of October this year... Well... I bought the original because with certain bands you have to buy the original!

At first listen, I was left with a bitter taste; it seemed like an Isis work but without that depth that had permeated their previous works.

But I was wrong!!

In its first part, the album presents itself like "10,000 days" did for Tool after an absolute masterpiece like "Lateralus", meaning a worthy successor that adds nothing to the well-honed sound of the band (be clear that I really liked "10,000 days"). "Wrists of kings" seems to come out from the grooves of the previous work, with those obsessive rhythms and those psychedelic guitars that hover lonely and almost unsure; while the voice does its dirty work where needed; but a change can be felt right away: they have approached solutions that remind me so much of the Tool school; those rhythms, those imperious crescendos, those dark and mantra-like melodies brought to mind the work of the mentioned band; there's also a noticeable departure from those post-rock dictates considered in the previous work (read as Mogwai and gy!be).

"Dulcinea" is the track chosen as a forerunner and it's also the simplest to penetrate, the most catchy, if I may say. It is in the second part that the album takes flight and presents all the novelties! More pronounced tribalism, increasingly reminiscent of Tool, and more refined electronics than in the past... The intensity rises enormously in tracks like holy tears, over root and thorn, and the concluding garden of light: beautiful in its whirling crescendos, in its off-kilter times, in its lysergic harmonies...

The track that most denotes the change is the instrumental firdous and bareen: electronic drum patterns in mantra-like motion overlap with the organicity of Aaron Harris' drums, the atmosphere is of a lysergic journey... here and there appear synths, guitars that rise towards infinity but never get there, in vibrato, various noises, percussion... Well, what else to say? It's hard to explain this album in words, like each of their works (to think that I couldn't even do the review of 'panopticon'...)...

Ultimately, this latest work by Isis is something that stands apart from their previous works but at the same time remains anchored to the sound built over all these years by the band; it's a work that needs to be absorbed in its entirety, not easy at first approach (perhaps it is the most structured and difficult work the band has produced so far) but it will know how to give you fantastic emotions like only bands of their caliber can do.

Expectations were high, and they have been repaid with an EXCELLENT work of transition, of transformation, which will lead the band to experiment further towards solutions I can't even imagine.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted!! Always great!