Isis are amazing I saw them open for Tool in Toronto back in September. They are an extremely talented bunch of musicians,Celestial and In The Absence Of Truth are outstanding albums.

Wow, this thread is ****. Can we get some literacy in here? Though they came out with their most recent album about a year ago, I am still not over it. I listen to it for days at a time. The most improved factor were the vocals, but the whole package is no joke. I was never a big fan of them until Turner started stepping his game up. You can tell they were heavily influenced by Tool after the bands toured together. Adam even plays on a couple of tracks on Wavering Radiant. I'm shocked no one else has talked about this album after an entire year.

Mmm, this thread is a bit tragic and I'm tempted to scrap it and start afresh - I find that most of the useful ISIS discussion takes place outside this thread anyway. Wavering Radiant is fantastic and garnered a bit of praise from lucifer, Satch and myself in this thread and from others elsewhere.

I don't see a need to scrap this one.
I also placed WR as one of my favorites of 2009 and I seem to remember talking about Isis all over the place except for this thread but this is the place for it so I'm a-gonna rant now..

Isis has been one of my favorite bands for a long time. They definitely are my favorite 'heavy' band. I like all of their music and I continue to listen to all of their albums at least occasionally. For reference, here's my loose ranking of them:

Oceanic
Panopticon
Celestial
Wavering Radiant
Sgnl>05 ep
Oceanic remixes / reinterpretations (not a real album but whatever)
Mosquito Control / The Red Sea eps (I rate them equally)
In the Absence of Truth

Note: I do not dislike any of them at all. Absence of Truth is a good album but I plain don't like the high concentration of 'clean' singing. However, the production is great and, as every rock journalist mentioned, the drum work improved leaps and bounds. But I was seriously worried that this was the beginning of the end for my favorite band. If WR had continued in that direction and Turner dropped the effected growl completely I would have been really disappointed.

The reason I like WR so much is because not only did they not go 'in a more mature direction' or whatever bands say when their heavy sound goes light, but they incorporated the lightness with the heavy and also upped the ethereal atmosphere a la Panopticon. The result was even better than I hoped for. I feel that WR was a much bigger step forward than Absence of Truth.

OK, somebody else rant now. I could talk about Isis forever

I have to agree with the fact that Wavering Radiant was a much better album than In the Absence of Truth. Sure Absence of Truth had some really enjoyable tracks like Holy Tears and the drumming is real good but still Wavering Radiant is way better crafted.

Aaron Turners clean vocals improved alot on WR and his growls were just spot on. The songs are great on the album and wor good together.

The only thing that I can complain about Wavering Radiant is that sometimes the sound on the album is little too "good" if you can say that. It sounds a little "glassy" from time to time but that isn't a big complaint.

Wavering Radiant is in my opinnion the best Isis album right after Panopticon and Oceanic.

I like In Absence of truth more than Wavering Radiant. In Absence of Truth has a real hypnotic quality to it.

Slightly different but I agree with your overall perception

The bolded words describe every Isis album. But, to me, Absence of Truth happens to be .. the least favorable hypnotic experience the band offers.

The other ones don't feel as hypnotic in the sense that I mean. In Absence of Truth had a lot more tribal sounding drumming, along with a bigger emphasis on post rock-ish influences.

Hmm .. I agree with you on the drumming.
Panopticon is the most 'post-rock' in my opinion. It's got a lot more expansive, undefined territory in the songs

Panopticon was so desolate and cold and I loved every bit of it.