A Brief History of Isis
By Team JamBase Dec 5, 2007 • 12:00 am PST
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“There is definitely new and different things happening with metal and heavy rock, and I would like to think that we’re helping pushing that envelope” says Isis guitarist Michael Gallagher speaking of the twenty-first century wave of progressive/art metal. For many non-listeners of metal the music is seen as a mindless form of noise pollution, gratuitous, obnoxious and bent on shock value. But in 2007, there’s a shift where certain corners of the metal world have been stamped as the thinking man’s music. Isis along with Pelican, Boris, Rosetta, Mastodon and a handful of others are reaching wider audiences all the time, capturing fans of groups as diverse as Medeski Martin & Wood, The Bad Plus and Umphrey’s McGee.
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Isis’ music is tailored to a sweet variety of styles and textures, so the diversity in their fan base is fitting. Formed in Boston around 1998, they’ve remained true purveyors of art metal. Their sounds wow the psyche, intellect and ears with the forthright abrasiveness of metal spliced with a unique, airy hybrid of singer Aaron Turner‘s half buried vocals and raw, ambient flavors that swing from the perturbing to the elysian. Their guitar riffs and lightly dusted keyboards lilt and lacerate simultaneously, tapping into doom and sludge metal as well as the static mathematics of Krautrock. Outdated schools of thought would simply construe the bulk of Isis’ tracks as mere crescendos but take a deeper listen to their instrumental and rhythmic edifices and complex mosaic patterns as esoterically woven Persian rugs emerge.
Their first three EPs led up to their debut full-length Celestial in 2000, which was Isis’ most raw, pummeling album, a gritty, crisp dose of intergalactic doom metal. Even though Celestial is well worth checking out, it was 2002’s Oceanic that cemented their place in metal. “It’s perceived that way by most consumers and journalists,” says Gallagher. “I think we hit our stride on that record but I think we’ve pushed ourselves with each release.”
While still heavy, Oceanic was invigorating and gleamed with the extreme illumination of the band’s ambition to play something powerful, mysterious and hypnotic. Some say Oceanic was the birth of post-metal while others feel it was a leap for post-rock. “People like to throw tags around, be they journalists or someone going to a show. I do it too,” says Gallagher, dismissing any grandiose claims.
Continue reading for more on Isis…
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2004’s Panopticon was more in the key of dark Krautrock, stemming from their love of the bands like Can, Kraftwerk and Neu, whose albums they all listen to regularly while on tour. Perhaps their most chilled effort, it’s still capable of blowing back one’s hair. With their latest release, In the Absence of Truth (released 10/31/06 on Ipecac Recordings), Isis has thrown almost everything from their previous work into a pot and boiled it down to a psychedelic, phantasmagorical and, at times, tribal sound. Gallagher simply calls it a “little looser” than anything they’ve done before.
The amenities at The Bomb Shelter, a Los Angeles studio, put the band in a relaxed state while they were holed up there. “It was a nice studio. It was very comfortable, a little nicer than what we were used to,” Gallagher comments. “Generally, the approach we take is that we go to a nice room to record drums because you can’t get away with a shitty studio to do something like drums. Then we go to a smaller basement studio to do overdubs; but in this situation we were able to secure a good deal on this place and it worked out while we were all there. We lived there for a month so it was nice to be comfortable, and [it] had TV and video games there when we weren’t working.”
But getting a good album doesn’t rely solely on comfort. It also has to do with who’s in the producer chair. Longtime Isis producer and all around sound genius Matt Bayles (Pearl Jam, Blood Brothers, Yakuza) recently left Minus the Bear to focus on studio production. Gallagher confirms that Bayles can get a good performance out of a band. “He has the patience to sit through us playing the same riff for however long it takes until it’s right, which is an admirable trait because we’re all pretty okay musicians but certainly when you’re under a microscope you can mess stuff up pretty often.”
 By Mark Dawursk |
“We left enough clues in the artwork and in the text of the record. If people are interested, they can certainly go investigate it on their own rather than us kind of spoon feeding them or cramming it down their throat,” he notes. “[If] they want to enjoy the record on an entertainment level then that’s perfectly fine.”
In the Absence of Truth has most assuredly reached a new realm of fans, thanks in no small part to Isis opening shows for Tool last year. Although clearly an intriguing opportunity, Gallagher was unsure if trying to warm up for a superband like Tool was such a good idea.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, of course, and I’m willing to say that I was one hundred percent wrong,” he admits. “But, when I think back to when I used to go to stadium shows when I was a kid, the only time I saw an opening band in that context blow away an audience was Metallica with Ozzy, and that was ’87. That was a long fucking time ago. I kind of had it in my head that we were going to be a kind of ‘lights on and find a seat’ band. I saw Spiritualized open up for Radiohead. They were fucking amazing. No one gave a crap at all and it was very unfortunate. While they’re a great band and if they were given all the lights and the lights were as they should be at a show and they had full access to the sound system it would have really impressed people. So, I thought that it was going to be like that going into it, and while I’m sure there were thousands of people there that either did not care or did not like us, there was also many thousands that did enjoy us very much. So, that was very rewarding.”
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