Isis’s 2002 album Oceanic is perhaps the central text in the
history of the young branch of experimental heavy music called
post-metal; in the stark and immense simplicity of its ideas, it comes
closer than perhaps any other record to the young genre’s Platonic
ideal. Judging by the L.A. band’s subsequent records, Isis has spent
the last seven years chasing a ghost that they saw while making
Oceanic, tweaking and molding its slow-motion roar and chiming
arpeggios and exploring the possibilities of the style. Two thousand
four’s Panopticon and 2006’s In the Absence of Truth showed only incremental progress, but the band takes bigger strides on
the new Wavering Radiant. Wedding sonic and harmonic richness to
gratifying weight and solidity, it’s the most accessible Isis record
yet — as much as eight-minute songs can be accessible —
partly because bandleader Aaron Turner spends a lot of time on the
microphone, both singing and bellowing, and even making use of
double-tracking in places. The band’s rhythmic limitations continue to
restrict its range, but within those boundaries, Radiant may
have taken Isis’s idiom to something resembling a peak, albeit a
subtle, rounded one. Instrumental quartet Pelican, though sometimes
mentioned likewise on the post-metal shortlist, often hews closer to
post-rock or post-hardcore. NYC’s Tombs are the most aggressive band on
the bill, sometimes coming off like High on Fire run through a tape
delay.
This article appears in May 21-27, 2009.