Metal is an art of extremes. That can take shape in the form of lightning riffs and mighty growls, but extremes can also be found in defiance of boundaries. Among its various subgenres with their own unique creative twists and turns, post-metal lends itself to a particularly subversive streak of experimentation. The seeds of this genre can be traced back to bands like Tool and Neurosis, artists whose music isn’t a straightforward onslaught of riffs and rhythms but rather a heaviness that feels more atmospheric, warped—not conventional or traditional. It’s metal, certainly, but it’s more than that.
While the early 2000s are often viewed through the lens of nu-metal and the rise of metalcore, the era also had its share of heavy bands looking to break away in a different direction. Chief among them were Isis, whose 2002 sophomore album Oceanic would leave a lasting impression on heavy music, its influence felt for decades after its release.
The Boston, Massachusetts band was formed in 1997 by guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner, guitarists Michael Gallagher and Bryant Clifford Meyer (the latter also contributing electronics), bassist Jeff Caxide, and drummer Aaron Harris, and released their debut album Celestial in 2000. Yet whereas the band primarily stuck to sludge on that record, Oceanic encompasses a broader spectrum.
On Oceanic, Isis sway between elements of sludge, doom, and post-rock, though these labels do little to fully represent its depth. It’s one thing to speak to the intense rock rhythm of Oceanic’s opening track “The Beginning of the End,” but it’s another thing to feel how it morphs into tactile sludge aggression; that sludge shifts into an ambient current, and the song seamlessly flows back and forth into each rhythm with remarkable fluidity.
The band’s technical prowess is one of Oceanic’s greatest qualities, allowing not only for a record that’s sonically expansive yet unravels carefully, revealing tremendous detail. Isis pair aggression with a carefully controlled application of atmosphere on each track. Guitar distortion meanders with careful plodding in “The Other,” the volume of stirring ambient noise accumulating over time. Wails echo in the distance, Turner’s cries come closer as the drums clash, all to be met by a heavy, sludgy hardcore-infused sequence. This grows even more awesome when the song leads into thunderous riffage that reeks of menace.
Between the heavy and meditative qualities of their performances, Isis’ music is contemplative and demands a deeper attention on the part of the listener. This not only goes for the dynamic degree of technicality that makes up Oceanic, but also the fact that most of the tracks extend beyond the seven-minute mark. These great lengths of time provide adequate space for the band’s instrumentation to blossom, the atmosphere of each song never feeling short lived or overstaying their welcome.
At two and three minutes apiece, respectively, “Untitled” and “Maritime” play into minimalism as brief, atmospheric intervals. This pairing leads into the album’s most colossal track, “Weight.” It opens with a dissonant guitar rhythm that drones hauntingly behind banging drums. Over the course of 10 minutes, the guitar’s presence grows in volume, matching the percussive intensity. As the tension builds up toward the end, the band escalates into a ferocity that culminates in a heavenly sounding drone.
Isis’ music is beautifully complex, further aided by the narrative playing throughout Oceanic. In a 2007 interview with former Neurosis member Scott Kelly on “The Show,” Turner opened up about the record’s story. Per Turner: “The gist of it is, the main character is a guy who lives his life in a sort of emotional seclusion for a good part of his life, until he meets this woman who he feels is his other half. The person who fulfills his being, takes up all this previously empty space and makes him re-envision the way he’s lived his life. But he comes to discover that there’s something beneath the surface of this person that isn’t quite right. What he finds out eventually is that she’s had a long term incestuous relationship with her brother, and this basically destroys him, because he had felt everything from this woman and hadn’t really retained anything of himself. So, what he decides to do is kill himself by drowning himself, but he finds true fulfillment and enlightenment.”
While it’s common within metal to explore emotional turmoil, Isis does so in a nuanced way. The ocean is one of the greatest metaphors in millennia of composed works. While water often represents life, the vastness of the sea contains depths of mystery. That mystery can lend itself to a sense of longing—of feeling among something so great, of being connected, yet feeling alone. With the band’s swelling ambiance and heavy riffs, Isis provide a fitting atmosphere that not only elevates the emotional intensity of Oceanic’s story, but also gives room to explore such ideas.
Closing out Oceanic are the beautifully heart wrenching songs “From Sinking” and “Hymn.” The former finds the group lashing out with sorrowful sounding rage, subsiding into melancholic gloom through guitar distortion. At first, “Hymn” serves as an extension of the crushing atmosphere of “From Sinking.” Ambient noise works its way alongside sludgy riffs and jarring guitar tones to create a disorienting air that feels suffocating, eventually giving way to a mesmerizing collage of ominous and ethereal tones.
Over its hour-long runtime, Oceanic is a juggernaut of emotional extremity, a significant contribution to post-metal’s evolution along with Isis’ body of work by extension. As Ben Richardson said in a write-up for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, “[Oceanic is] the standard by which all post-metal albums have been judged since.”
In the two decades since Oceanic’s release, the notion of heavy music has been radicalized. Hell, the meaning of metal itself has undergone drastic transformation. The impact of Oceanic, and of Isis, is immeasurable when looking at the bands today that push against convention—that refuse to remain in one lane. Metal is just one genre in a greater ocean of music, and there’s so much room for exploration.
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