Music Spotlight: ISIS - Panopticon

ISIS is a band that I hated when I first heard them a few years ago. Like many of my favorite albums, I put this one aside for a few months and came back to it. And I am glad I did. Panopticon is a beast of an album. It is one of the most crushing albums I’ve heard, but the atmospheric moments are what made me return.

I first heard about ISIS when they toured with Tool in the winter of 2006. Tool was one of my favorite bands at the time so I decided to check out their opening act. My brother had recently bought ISIS’s newest album, In the Absence of Truth. I liked everything about it, the dynamics, the crushing atmosphere, the almost tribal-like drumming-except for the vocals. The vocals were a definite turn-off.

So when I decided to buy Panopticon, I thought I had made a mistake. Where Aaron Turner mixes singing in with hardcore vocals on In the Absence of Truth, Panopticon contained almost all hardcore vocals. So I put it back on the shelf, angry that I had wasted $10. When I picked up the album a few months later, something had changed. The vocals didn’t bother me at all. I actually enjoyed them. I began to see them as simply another instrument.

Although Panopticon isn’t the heaviest album I’ve heard, it is still crushing. But it’s also one of the only heavy albums I can listen to often. Panopticon is an album that is hard to describe sonically. It alternates crushing moments with droning atmospheres with clean guitars and long stretches without vocals. That’s one of the things that drew me back to this album. Listen to the first song, “So Did We” for example. It starts with distorted guitars and hardcore vocals. About a minute in, the song shifts completely. The vocals drop out leaving clean guitars that build and shift and complement each other. The album is filled with moments like this. It’s an album that I can put on in the background and zone out to, or listen intently. This is why it is one of my favorite albums. I’m glad I gave it a second chance.

Posted by Mark Riddlebarger