Isis
Panopticon

I've been meaning to write this review for a long time, and I never did it for two reasons: the first is that there's already an excellent one by StefanoHab. The other reason is a fundamental problem: you can love certain albums (and certain bands) to the point of having an almost reverential fear of them. You can basically be afraid to write anything about them, simply because it might somehow diminish them or give an inaccurate picture. Yet in the end, I had to give in to temptation and launched into this review of a real masterpiece.

The Bostonians Isis, after the success of "Oceanic" in 2002, return to the limelight with this "Panopticon," an album from 2004. In the meantime, trying to categorize it in terms of genre, you immediately get bogged down in what the hell these guys play. Theoretically, it's sludge, but it's also post-hardcore, stoner, post-rock, at times electronic... "Panopticon" is everything, a sound magma that attacks and envelops you right from the initial "So Did We" and drags you with it into hells of burning buildings and oceanic storms and then immediately shoots you above the clouds, where the everyday chaos no longer makes sense, where the sky is clear and where human life, seen from above, resembles nothing more than a continuous senseless swarming of gnats.

"Panopticon," the all-seeing eye, whose name is inspired by the design of a maximum security prison where inmates are incessantly watched day and night, with privacy totally shattered... "Panopticon," the eye of (a) God watching us from above and judging the work of billions of people in a single moment... "Panopticon," the upheaval and primordial force of nature put to music... "Panopticon" is a joy for the ears, it's one of those albums that become addictive and almost rise to the level of mystical experiences, if you can just get into the right mindset and appreciate such mastery in scoring passions and free emotions, pure, unfiltered. It's as if someone managed to give noise to the ethereal, as if someone succeeded in bringing back to the seven notes the sound of rain turning into a storm, its scent, the roar of the oceans in turmoil, and the peace of oceanic immensities. If the calm before life and that after death had a sound that could be humanly heard, it would probably be "Panopticon."

For me, it’s impossible to describe the seven tracks that make up this album. Let's take, as an example, the first track "So Did We". The start is roaring, typically sludge and post-hardcore (especially in Aaron Turner's voice), but then immediately after, a melodic tear opens in which a long, harmonious, and intricate guitar arpeggio winds around itself, building its life and structure from its constant tangling. The characteristic of building fluid and time-dilated melodies brick by brick, geometrically, is a trait that Isis shares with a related group, Neurosis. Once the electric spiral reaches completion, the voice reappears, this time with a different timbre, to recite a new verse. Then follows an ethereal moment of acoustic peace, with dreamy arpeggios almost pinkfloydian at times. It’s like being on one of those zero-gravity towers at amusement parks, the ones that suddenly lift you up only to let you fall suddenly. Except in this song, when you ascend, you pass through the clouds and reach the farthest galaxies... But when you fall back to earth, you're engulfed only in flames, smoke, and dust. This is basically what you can feel listening to this first track, but the sensation of peace of the senses and harmony with the cosmos immediately shattered by the primal fury of chaos is perceptible in the subsequent songs as well. Worth mentioning is certainly the continuous and unsettling crescendo that culminates in the apocalypse of "In Fiction", as well as its direct opposite "Wills Dissolve", where meditation and sound dilation dominate (except for the ending, already more convulsed).

Also remarkable is the syncopated "Syndic Calls", while you will be amazed by "Altered Course". It's like walking on a glacier alone, with icebergs sliding slowly on the frozen sea and fish swimming swiftly beneath your feet, their reflections breaking on the icy wall you're walking on. It all ends with the geometric "Grinning Mouths", the final summation of all the work by Isis on this album, with various melodic ups and downs and electric outbursts alternating with moments of apparent peace (where instead only tension accumulates, which is inevitably released through walls of liquid sounds and metallic bursts).

I think it's pointless to add further comments to what's already been said. Without mincing words, the album is an absolute masterpiece, to be owned in all ways: if you appreciate it, you will certainly understand my long and perhaps inconclusive digressions.