In the interest of honesty and professional courtesy, I’m going to admit that I never listened to the last Isis record, Wavering Radiant. You’ll note it wasn’t reviewed here. That’s because I figured after 2006′s In the Absence of Truth, which I found to be phoned in and largely uninspired, the band didn’t have anything else to offer, and unless they underwent some radical change or progression, that was going to remain true for the duration.

That might sound harsh, but really, how many songs have Isis made in the last seven years with the exact same drum beat? I’m glad Aaron Turner learned how to sing, and I think he does it well, and I appreciate the influence Isis has had over the post-metal genre as second only to Neurosis, but anything they do at this point, they’re not going to be the first to do it. Neurosis is like The Simpsons to Isis‘ South Park: “Simpsons did it.” Doesn’t mean South Park sucks, but it’s never going to be first.

And though I relished Oceanic and still think Panopticon is one of the best albums to come out this decade, my mind isn’t really open to what Isis are doing now. It’s simply lost my attention, and furthermore, nothing I’ve heard about Wavering Radiant or any of the reviews I’ve read have done much to change my mind. When I got the press release about their new video for the song “20 Minutes/40 Years,” yeah, I clicked on it and played the video, but I skipped my way through. From what I can tell, it looks like Tool. For the sake of fairness, here it is so you can make up your own mind.

Despite both bands playing a modern and often staggeringly heavy form of progressive metal, I?ve always compared Germany?s The Ocean and Chicago?s Yakuza in terms of situation more than style. Basically, the deal is both bands offer parts that are ball-rattlingly heavy and few songs that are actually memorable the whole way through. Likewise, both bands have developed cult followings who would say I?ve got my head up my ass for thinking that. Maybe I do.

Regardless, my pre-listening impression (read: prejudice) of Pelagic/Metal Blade?s reissue of The Ocean?s 2004 full-length debut turned out to be pretty accurate. ?Gee, I bet this?ll sound kind of like The Ocean does now, but less fleshed out and more intense.? Sure enough, anyone who got bored or whose mind wandered during the ambient parts of 2007?s conceptually weighty sleeper hit Precambrian might have an easier time connection to the Fluxion material. It?s still some pretty heady post-metal, but not in the Neuro-Isis sense, and hearing the hunger in the songwriting of guitarist/vocalist/songwriter/percussionist/Pelagic label owner/sampler specialist Robin Staps gives the songs a perceptible immediacy that some of their latter material, while much grander in scope, could never replicate.

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Start 1:10AM: There are almost no practical reasons for anyone to get involved in the trade inaccurately called “music journalism” despite having very little to do with either. The money (when you get any) sucks, and contrary to popular belief, finding out the vast majority of your rock heroes are morons, resentful assholes or both isn’t glamorous or enticing. It’s disappointing. The music industry, such as it is, doesn’t give a shit about you. People use you for what they can and are done with you, and you, if you’re good at it, are done with them too. There are good people and you make some friends, but mostly you exist in a cordial symbiosis. I need you and you need me. Until they don’t or you don’t, whichever comes first.

I’ve been thinking a lot about career lately. I’ve had time. The only reason I can come up with for doing this — aside from the “Aw man, do it for the love” line which is bullshit no matter what anyone tells you — is free goo. CDs and concert tickets. I’m 27 years old with a lifestyle and attitude unhealthy for me on almost every level and the realization I’ve been forced to come to is my entire professional life has been geared toward getting me free CDs and concert tickets. My mother used to tell me I had the potential to be anything I wanted, to do anything I wanted. Clearly she was lying.

The point here isn’t to moan, only to point out facts. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t be doing it (likewise, if I didn’t love being miserable, I wouldn’t be), but in the words of someone wiser than myself, it is what it is. Usually it’s complacence. At least I’m not in the city every fucking day.

But on the topic of free CDs. Most of the “metal majors” don’t send out physical promos anymore. It’s all mp3s and album streams. So even that purpose is gone. Century Media used to ship their albums in cardboard sleeves, ditto for Nuclear Blast. Both have stopped, though the occasional care package from the latter is most welcome. Metal Blade sent liner notes, tray cards and CDs without cases, but that stopped. I don’t know what Roadrunner does these days. Relapse does streamers and sleeves, though they’re not always complete. If it’s a digipak, you get the disc and the liner notes. That’s how it was with the Voivod and Dysrhythmia records, anyway. I used to ask for the real deal retail versions from everyone when I didn’t get them automatically, as though I was entitled. Not anymore. Earache, on the other hand, just sent me a full copy — double disc jewel case and cardboard outer cover — of the limited CD/DVD reissue of Cult of Luna‘s last album, 2008′s Eternal Kingdom.

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Atlanta, Georgia‘s experinauts Irreversible have a marked hardcore influence that comes up not directly in the music, but more in the overall pacing and intensity of their heavier moments. On their 2007 full-length debut, Sins (HERO Entertainment), they meld Isis-style structures with thickened Torche tones and tread a mostly-instrumental path through thoughtful songwriting with some heavy rock flourishes and a whole lot of consideration put to atmosphere. Making use of three vocalists — guitarist Jackob Franklin, electronic specialist Billy Henis and guitarist JJ Hodge (the lineup is rounded out by bassist CJ Ridlings and drummer Zach Richards) — and numerous guest singers and screamers, Irreversible are able to add a diversity to their sound and avoid the post-metal trap of having a record that sounds really cool but is also boring as hell.

Sins opens with “Tambora,” one of four longer pieces spread out over the course of the album’s 64 minutes. With mood and flow as focal points, Irreversible offers three shorter tracks — including album high-point “Blackness that Spread” — before the 10:47 title track, offering a range that goes against what’s typical of their region. It’s nice to hear a band come out of Georgia not aping Mastodon, Zoroaster, Kylesa or American Heritage, and while Irreversible‘s sound still fits easily into the realm of modern (post-) metal, their liberal use of electronics and well-done shifts in direction are enough to stand them out among the others with similar musical goals.

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As I sit in my pajamas looking out the window on the rainy valley Wednesday, both core members of Brooklyn‘s Inswarm — vocalist/programmer Fade Kainer and guitarist/bassist/vocalist Joshua Lozano — are on tour in Europe with Jarboe, getting ready for a show in Helsinki on their way to Poland Friday. Their debut full-length under the moniker (they used to be Still Life Decay), Surely Death is No Dream showed up here a little while back and although I’d been avoiding putting it on because I anticipated not being into it and then feeling guilty about it because somehow it’s my duty to like everything not signed to a label, once I finally listened, I found myself intrigued and engrossed by their industrial post-metal turmoil.

Kainer mostly screams his vocals, though there are some ’90s-style Euro industrial sung parts on opener “This Moment,” and his voice is appropriately tortured throughout, adding a very human element to the otherwise cold and somewhat mechanical musical approach on the limited to 200 copies release. Live drums on “This Moment, ” “Tribulation” and “Drift” are contributed by Carl Eklof, bass comes from The Cutest Babyhead Ever‘s Brett Z. on the same tracks, setting up Surely Death is No Dream‘s variety of sound and ambience. There are three interludes (two named “Interlude”) and electronic noises throughout all the songs, distinguishing the stylistic/aesthetically-conscious Inswarm from generic post-metal or even more laptopped bands like Rosetta. The result is dark and well-suited to its album cover, with plenty of room for further creative development in any number of directions.

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If you’ve ever heard a Minsk album, then you know the Chicago post-metal four-piece don’t do anything without it being packed tight. They slam more sounds into their songs than ever on their third full-length (second for Relapse), With Echoes in the Movement of Stone, offering a more varied take on the rich and darkly psychedelic crushing ambience that has become their signature sound over the course of these last several years and albums The Ritual Fires of Abandonment (2007) and Out of a Center Which is Neither Dead Nor Alive (2005).

Change can be felt particularly in the vocals of guitarist Christopher Bennett, who works more than isolated shouting into his arsenal on songs like opener “Three Moons” and later cut “Crescent Mirror.” Timothy Mead‘s keyboard work is also higher in the mix, lending a progressive dynamism to “The Shore of Transcendence,” which at 9:59 and with a plethora of mood and tempo changes, is practically an album in itself. Bassist/vocalist Sanford Parker, who has produced all three of Minsk‘s LPs (as well as records for Pelican when they were good, Yakuza, Nachtmystium and half of the Windy City), outdoes himself in both performance and in capturing the nuances in these songs. The building of tension has never been more confidently accomplished by the band as it is here.

Drummer Tony Wyioming is a big part of that accomplishment, taking his heralded tribal rhythms to new levels of complexity, speed and precision. In “The Shore of Transcendence,” beneath the chanting multi-part vocal harmonies, he makes his home jumping from tom to tom stopping only to crash a cymbal or five and propel the song forward. With Echoes in the Movement of Stone shows more emotional diversity than anything Minsk has done before, as the rumbling, feedbacking undercurrent of “Almira’s Premonition” demonstrates. Less visceral than past outings, but with more depth, the album is a crucial moment for the band and genre alike, definitively stating there’s more to this sound than just pulling a “lather, rinse, repeat” on Isis‘ Oceanic or Through Silver in Blood by Neurosis.

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Their appropriately-titled demo, The Demonstration 2009, may only be upwards of 11 minutes long, but New Jersey newcomer post-metal troupe Pharaoh (not to be confused with the Philly power metal band of the same name on Cruz Del Sur) raise some interesting questions about how fans and bands interact in 2009, and what effect accessibility has on the listening experience. The only way to get the two song release is to email the band at: pharaohcontact_@_gmail._com [underscores added to thwart spammers].

The other day when I pulled the self-made curtain in my bedroom aside to let some light in, I found a small robin had found its way in past the outside storm window, gotten trapped in between the screen and the window itself, and died. It lay on its back, legs up, very much dead. I’m still unclear as to how it got in there, and though its removal gave me a much-needed opportunity to open the window and vacuum some spider eggs that would have tortured me all throughout the summer months, I was hardly glad for the task. In the end, I took a bunch of paper towels, put an already mostly full garbage bag by my side and grabbed it while trying not to look at what I was doing. Like picking up a load of dog shit. The dog shit that only a couple weeks ago I’d have taken for an announcement of Spring.

As I listen to the churning machination of the opening riff to Pharaoh‘s “I Murderer, I,” that image of unintended cruelty and destruction sticks in my head in an almost disturbing way. Here I was, captor of this stupid creature, without even knowing it. I kept it just inches from my sleeping head until it starved to death and then disposed of it the same way I disposed of that leftover steak in the fridge. It’s a vicious process. That kind of hopelessness, that kind of brutality, is what I hear in the screams on The Demonstration 2009.

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