IN THE ABSENCE OF TRUTH

I don't understand, what happened to Isis? Instead of tight primal drumming, and thick, trippy lead lines, I get a Toolish drummer, a singer who loses the eeriness of his voice, and a post rocky guitar player? NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Isis is the band that got me into post metal, I consider Panopticon, and especially Oceanic, some of the defining albums of the genre, and this comes out?

From the first couple of seconds of the album, I knew I was in for a surprise, tom drumming, funky tortoise arpeggios, and a phased voice... I was confused, but open minded, and was sure things were going to go up, but little did I know it was only going to get worse. Distorted guitars did not make their intro until the last minute, clean vocals were being sung throughout the entire song, and the stupid tom drumming was ceaseless, Isis, what happened to the sparse vocals, crunchy sludgy guitars, and quintessential drumming. Things werent looking good, and they only got worse, every song was basically the same thing, while not in rivers, 1000 shards, and garden of light have some excellent guitar and vocal moments, nothing stood out, no emotion was being displayed, and most importantly, the trippy lead lines are almost completely gone! Structure wise, it's not bad, the album flows kind of like panopticon straightforward song in the beginning, mellower, more eclectic songs in the middle, and a big bang at the end.

I don't know if I'll ever get used to the change in guitar, I absolutely hate the drums, but if the vocals were to cut back a little bit, it would save the band from such a wrathful review. I might be able to get use to the new vocal style, but I think the vocals are just too prevalent in this album. I guess I should admit, I'm not too big of a fan of change, but I can tolerate some, In the absence of truth went a bit overboard, and the one that they let go of that may have made the album a little more interesting was the spaciness of Panopticon, who knows though, they may bring back some of the old sound in their next album. 2 stars.