Isis / Sgnl > 05
Album: Sgnl > 05   Collection:General
Artist:Isis   Added:Jun 2001
Label:Neurot Recordings  

Recent Airplay
1. Jul 29, 2020: Some Songs Without Words
Beneath Below
4. Jan 23, 2009: Emphysema For Emphasis
Beneath Below
2. Nov 13, 2009: Hipster Garbage
Constructing Towers
5. May 14, 2008: Baptism of Solitude
Divine Mother
3. Apr 29, 2009: orangeasm
Constructing Towers
6. Dec 05, 2007: Baptism of Solitude
Divine Mother

Album Review
Hannah Mae
Reviewed 2002-10-17
Massive headnodding music with a powerful sense of dynamics - thick thudding power chords overlaid with bits of stringy dissonance, vague evocative lyrics delivered in a rough roar, lurching and roiling bass and drums. Here and there circular and plodding like Godflesh (and indeed, JK Flesh remixes track 5), apocalyptic like Neurosis, all furious like Botch/earlier Cave In, with an almost emo tendency to get all quiet and then rock all out (plus the mysterious heartfelt lyrics and beautiful packaging and occasional melodic parts). All this, and they have three guitarists! Fucking divine.
All tracks flow together, but not so's you couldn't play them individually, and I believe (from the track numbering) that this is actually meant to be played right after Celestial, their first full-length.

1. rumbles, echoes, typewriter clicks in an underground sewer culvert, dissonant piano
2. pulsating churn that ebbs and flows around the singer's laryngitic screams - nice and long
3. bass hum > LOUD kick pulse blows the speakers of the unwary > electrified vox
4. quiet pulse of reverby guitar, layers on the distortion and the other instruments creep in one at a time - useful to segue into heavy music. Slow and inexorable.
5. Justin Broadrick (Godflesh) remix of the title track off their full-length. The original is a massive flailing affair with drums all over and lots of chugging guitar; this pulls off all the flesh and leaves big thick bones, fat drumbeats and an electrified whine and bits of crunchy looped guitar and little sets of tiny beeps, all laced together with indecipherable echoey vocals. Burning, stately, tragic. Ends with a sweet shifting drone, like the first rays of dawn at the end of the horror movie.

Track Listing
1. SGNL>50   3. Beneath Below
2. Divine Mother   4. Constructing Towers
  5. Celestial