Isis | In the Absence of Truth (Ipecac)
The band’s fondness for nonstandard rock meters shows up in lots of slippery threes and sixes that resist a straightforward backbeat, and the songs frequently hit trap-door shifts in tempo and density. Most audibly, the austere minimalism of Panopticon has been shattered by a storm of percussion–rushing, pattering, galloping, even churning with the steady thunder of a double kick (a first for Isis). Drummer Aaron Harris makes sparing use of his hi-hat and often plays his snare clean, without the strainer, so that his kit sometimes sounds like the massed hand drums of a Sufi trance ceremony.
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In fact, if you don’t like waiting three, four, or even six minutes for the distortion pedals to come on, skip this album entirely–gratification isn’t just delayed but fraught with difficulty. The music shares the dense ornamentation and monumental scale of antique Islamic architecture, and it’s hard to appreciate its obsessively, almost microscopically detailed surface without losing sight of how mind-blowingly huge it is. It’s a bit like the grand dome of the famous “imam’s mosque” in Esfahan, Iran, 170 feet high but covered to its topmost reaches–where no human eyes can see–with the precisely repeating loops and brambles of an intricate mosaic arabesque in turquoise, gold, and ivory.
