Like Tool, Neurosis and Pelican, Boston-bred post-metal band Isis creates sprawling, droning metal that's both brutal in impact and transcendent in delivery. Whether performed with screamed or softly sung vocals, dense or spacious guitars, storming beats or featherlight cymbal strokes, the songs spiral, twist and dive in both narrative and instrumental story arcs, unraveling like epic poems or multi-layered film soundtracks.

Isis songs aren't constructed with traditional verses or choruses and they're not willfully oblique, instead blossoming like computer fractals into something beautiful and mysterious. Only, they're not randomly generated -- not at all. Each swelling crescendo, every billowing cluster of tones is carefully examined, analyzed and assembled to be as emotional and revelatory as possible. Sometimes they tumble in jagged, rhythmically complex shards, other times they drift in sparse, simple waves, yet however they reveal themselves, they do so with purpose and passion. (Click "more" to hear our podcast interview with Isis frontman Aaron Turner.) Read more...