February 22, 2005 • Neurot Recordings
Ah, post-rock with Isis members. It's like this band was tailor-made for me back in 2005. I listened to this album quite a lot back then but it's been years since I listened to this band at all, to the point where I have pretty much forgotten what this album was like. It actually sounds a lot like what I described: instrumental post-rock structures and aesthetics with a heavier, more distorted tone; kind of like the softer Isis interludes from their later albums with a bit of a faster tempo.
As far as compared to other "heavy post-rock" bands like Russian Circles or whatnot, and even the non-heavy ones, it's relatively generic. Maybe that's just me, since I really did overdo it on this kind of thing back then, but even in 2005 when this came out it was pretty well played-out by then. There are a few true "riffs" in the album that slowly get developed and expanded on, but all too frequently the band feels kind of unfocused. I think the problem is a lack of the dynamic range that makes most post-rock good; they start off at a pretty high level and just stay there most of the time, which isn't very engaging.
But somehow I still find myself more or less enjoying this album. At the least, it's very listenable. Sometimes there will be a bass line or unison riff or a piece of atmospherics that clicks with me in just the right way. Despite my detractions above, I still think it's an album worth listening to, if not at least to learn a bit more about where post-rock was in the mid-2000s.
Thus concludes Nostalgia Week! It mostly sucked. I probably won't do it again.
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