Isis

Touring their fifth studio album ‘Wavering Radiant’, Isis still haven’t enough of a following in the UK to bring them out of the basement. On this cold October evening they played not the first, not the second, not the third but the fourth room of the Manchester Academy. For the band’s small but devoted Manchester fan base, though, this was a dream come true. We, the crowd of new and old fans alike, were lucky enough to be standing a mere few feet away from where these legends of the avant-metal scene would be testing the tensile strength of our eardrums.

The stage darkened and a low rumbling rose from the ground as four figures took the stage. ‘Hall of Kings’ burst into being and the sound was enormous. Aaron Turner’s visceral palm muting formed the terra firma over which effects arched, coming quickly into being but persisting like aeroplane trails (courtesy of Bryant Clifford Meyer), painting a sky of higher frequencies. And viola! A breathtaking soundscape came into focus right before my ears.

Or should I say eyes? The thing is, without wanting to sound too much like a new-age crystal-healing type, the music of Isis is very visual. The songs are crafted with very distinct low, middle and high frequency layers, giving texture to the music, while the slow formulation and repetition of themes and progressive structure give it form and shape. All that’s left is the colour, which the minimal stage lighting provided in big smoky clouds of purples and greens. Bright enough to enrich the music, but dim enough to allow room for the imagination to fill in the rest of the personal, ineffable world that ISIS inevitably has you conjure.

The sound levels were perfect for the most part, which is no small feat with a band such as this. Sometimes described as ‘Sludge Metal’, there are moments where the distortion and intensity are overwhelming. It takes skill and precision, therefore, to reproduce this intensity while still accounting for the subtleties and nuances that make their sound unique. This was also down to how incredibly tight the bad were. Sometimes, though, the more melodic vocals would be overpowered and difficult to hear but this didn’t detract from the music at all. In fact, in some parts it took me a while to remember there were any vocals, the music being rich and enjoyable enough without. Perhaps a sign that they are in parts somewhat unnecessary.

With such a glorious sound and an epic decade spanning set list developing, it was bitterly disappointing to have the band leave the stage after playing for just over an hour. A glimmer of hope that they would come back on for an extended encore of their more popular songs from albums like ‘In The Absence of Truth’, and ‘Oceanic’ was soon extinguished. The band came back on stage for just one song, ‘Backlit’, from their 2004 release ‘Panopticon’. Though this is a beautiful song to end on, it was still dissatisfying to see such a powerful act come and go in just an hour and a quarter. This is the danger of too much obscurity I guess: Though it’s preferable to see a band in an intimate setting, I couldn’t help wishing they’d played in a bigger venue where they would have had a later curfew.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.