SGNL>05

by

Isis

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I believe this is the finest EP by this amazingly innovative band. It contains 4 real songs and an intro. It is a great addition or extension of "Celestial" so if you like that, you're sure to enjoy this. And it is 35 minutes long, which is as long as some bands' full albums.

The first track is an intro, and sounds similar to Celestial's intro. Then The first real song goes on starts with a crushing riff and soon enough the vocals appear. The song continutes for a while as a sluggish, crunchy, standard Isis song, then about halfway through it; it breaks down into a clean, ominous melodic riff, something I wasn't expecting when listening for the first time, very nice refreshing change in direction in the song. It is definately one of their most solid songs overall. "Beneath Below" is a shorter, ambient track with a pummeling bass drum and very low frequency keyboard playing, it's actually not anything special. "Constructing Towers" starts off slowly with a quiet chord being strummed, then progresses on, picking up pace towards the end, until it finally deconstructs into swirling frequencies.

"Celestial (Signal Fills the Void)" is a remix of "Celestial (The Tower)," but I didn't even recognize it was a remix. This is probably the most interesting song, with ambient additions of keyboards, distant screams, and industrial noises to the rhythmic metallic chaos. This song `regresses' and slowly becomes more empty towards the end of its 10 minute duration, however adding more ethereal sounding keyboards, and finally breaking down into a single chord. It's definitely one of my top favorite Isis songs.

Be sure to check out their full length albums first, especially "Panopticon," the newest full length, which will be coming out 3 weeks from the time I wrote this. I can't wait to hear what they've done this time.

While this typifies Isis's sound and the direction in which they are headed with their upcoming Oceanic album, I was really confused when I picked this up, because it was the first Isis CD I had gotten. I didn't realize this was being marketed as a companion CD to Celestial (Hence the tracklisting) - The opening track is just a throwback to the noise segues on Celestial; Divine Mother (The Tower Crumbles) is undoubtedly the only really "heavy" song on the CD, but is a good example of some expansion on their progressive songwriting style. Beneath Below features some interesting production work, and the most, uh...destructive "bass drum" sound I've ever heard (if you can call it a bass drum - It sounds like a distorted cannon, and it makes my speakers cry). Constructing Towers comes off to me as a poorly written Neurosis song, and the remix of Celestial, though very ear-grabbing, is just that - A remix. So three new actual songs, one remix, and one noise segue. A good buy, but get Celestial first.