ISIS rule…
Posted by Sam on 30 May 2007 at 11:58 pm | Categories: Music
I saw ISIS on Saturday, I thought I should quickly write about it before I forget how awesome it was.
Basically we got there most of the way through Final, who I didn’t realise was supporting, apparently it was a one-off thing and he just did the Corp date. Anyway JKB sounded on good form although I didn’t really have any time to immerse myself in his wall of drone-ness. He’ll be back, and I got some really great CDs of his. Oxbow Acoustic Duo were next, who were completely weird in a good avant-garde kinda way…A sweaty guy singing, speaking and whispering tortured vocals over assorted acoustic blues riffs. They really caught my attention for most of their set, although towards the end it became less interesting. I listened to some Oxbow again the next day and it’s actually very similar albeit with electric guitars and a band vibe.
So then ISIS come on, and they play some songs off the new album…which are about twice as heavy as expected and they really kick gluteus maximi; Aaron whatshisface (guitars/vocals) was headbanging like a complete loon during the first two tracks. They then skip through a good mix of tracks, playing mostly from the new album but also the odd couple from Panopticon; In Fiction was particularly awesome, but that’s one of my favourites. Holy Tears wasn’t quite as crushing as I thought it would be, but it wasn’t off-putting, especially given how heavy the rest of the set was. I don’t think there were any off Oceanic but can’t quite remember – if there was then it was probably only the one track. When they came back on for the encore it started to get really interesting as they just launched into this great hypnotic instrumental jam, which went on for at least 5 minutes before they kicked into Celestial (The Tower) from Celestial, which was ridiculously heavy and extremely raw-sounding. This song, which is over 9 minutes long, didn’t really finish and they drew out the ending into an absolutely awesome layered post-rock/drone/noise jam which started off very quiet and went on for ages before ending in an immensely loud crescendo. I could have listened to that for another 30min. So anyway, very good.