Isis: In The Absence Of Truth (2LP) [IPECAC]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 2LP set comes in a thick tip-on gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeves. At almost 65 minutes it's the band's longest album, pushing Aaron Turner's clean vocals further than ever over tribal drumming and long, slow-building ambience.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered
• Tip-on gatefold jacket
• Printed inner sleeves
• Lyrics included

About the album

Aaron Turner wouldn't say exactly what the concept was, but he did leave a reading list: Hassan-i Sabbah, Don Quixote, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and Borges' Labyrinths. Isis came into their fourth album on the back of the concept records Oceanic and Panopticon, with Ipecac now behind them, and they wrote this one with members split between New York and Los Angeles.

They recorded and mixed it at The Bomb Shelter in Los Angeles, co-producing with Matt Bayles. "Wrists of Kings" opens in a slow swell, "Dulcinea" borrows its name from Quixote's imagined love, and Aaron Harris's drumming turns "Not in Rivers, But in Drops" and "Holy Tears" into something close to ritual, with Charley Turner adding extra vocals on both. Cave In's Caleb Scofield joins on "1000 Shards," Troy Zeigler brings percussion and acoustic guitar to "Firdous E Bareen," and "Garden of Light" closes the album at full, glowing height.

The inner sleeve prints the motto attributed to Hassan-i Sabbah, followed by a careful note that historians still debate whether he said it. Post-metal, it turns out, comes with footnotes.

Also at Kops: more Isis on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Ipecac (cat# IPC282LP), a reissue of the 2006 album.