Isis
Wavering Radiant

The "Wavering Radiant" by the Boston-based Isis is an album I was eagerly awaiting. I have always had immense respect for this group, preferring them to another ensemble, Neurosis, with whom they share, willingly or not, various labels such as post-metal, sludge, etc. (that this categorization doesn't quite suit Isis is another matter).

"Wavering Radiant" is a complex album, even more so than its predecessors. More labyrinthine, with many '70s and progressive influences, less post-rock (in this sense, the excellent "In The Absence Of Truth" still stands as the album that best developed this genre in Isis's style), post-metal, and sludge without a doubt, but also with decent post (hard)core reminiscences that the band seemed to have set aside for a moment after "Panopticon." Is it an album of synthesis then? Perhaps. It’s true that they attempt to go beyond a genre they themselves helped to create, introducing new ideas (the progressive and almost Tool-like patterns; fittingly, among the guests is Adam Jones), enriching with new sounds and making them their own, then re-expressing them in their own way.

The work can often give a sense of dispersion, of losing a guiding thread, and can present unusual moments where you might expect an instrumental crescendo or a tight rhythmic section-guitar-vocal phrase from Turner, only to be surprised by an extra digression, a spiral, a vortex you didn’t think could arise from nowhere: a new parenthesis opens, taking you away from the original track. But it’s perhaps this very characteristic that fascinates me so much about this work. There’s a way and a way to digress (musically speaking). You can get lost in masturbations that are ends in themselves, mind-twisting and brain-squeezing sonic flairs (I think of something by Mastodon), or you can let yourself be carried by the tide, sucked into whirlpools, discovering that instead of marine depths, there’s a new cosmos welcoming you, start exploring it for a few seconds, only to be dragged back to the surface just as you seem to understand what was happening to you.

This feeling accompanies me perpetually during the listening of the seven (actually six, excluding the minute and forty seconds of the title track, at times almost white noise, somewhat useless to tell the truth) tracks of this album. Among them, I find it challenging to choose one superior to the others. Just as it makes little sense to describe them: fundamentally, they consist of liquid guitars, now distorted, now roaring, enveloping and labyrinthine like the (mostly used) electronics, a bass finally with a bold voice and a predominant role, not crushed by the drums, and an Aaron Turner as always superlative, both in growl and in poetic clean. Combining these elements with the stylistic cross-references mentioned at the start (sludge, post-rock, post-metal, post-core, progressive) gives a rough outline of the band's work.

Personally, I cannot help but mention "Ghost Key," where the progressive aura (the new element introduced by the band) is breathed in full, and the liquefied "20 Minutes/40 Years," where the specter of the more expansive and atmospheric compositions (post-rock?) of "Panopticon" and "In The Absence Of Truth" hovers, present but never oppressive.

I don't want to describe other tracks, not to influence others' listening. I close the review with a warning: it’s a challenging album, unpredictable, one of the most difficult to embrace among those produced by the band. But, beware, it’s also one of the most beautiful, which, in my opinion, easily deserves the highest marks, regardless of the dispersiveness it might sometimes reveal.

These gentlemen are extraordinary, no doubt about it: enjoy listening and welcome back to Isis.