Review Summary: Not a landmark release, but a showcase of a band at their rawest, most primitive and crushingly heavy. Well worth owning if you are an ISIS fan.
ISIS were quite possibly one of the greatest bands of the post metal genre that have ever graced the Earth. They consistently released a number of excellent quality albums that boasted a magnanimous sound to them, as well as being versatile in their sound throughout different releases. Their first major release, Celestial, shows the band at their rawest form, producing some intensely dense music and crushing instrumentation. Right off the bat, after the somewhat irrelevant SGNL introduction, the listener is plummetted with the title track. The riffs, to say the least, are crushingly heavy (very heavily downtuned guitars feature) and Aaron Turner's signature bellows and yells help embellish what is a somewhat insurmountably dense sound. However, despite the crust influences, ISIS are so much more than that.
Halfway through the title track, things begin to slow down and we are treated to the lighter side of the band. ISIS' clean sections have always been phenomenally well constructed in my opinion. The bipolarity between dense, heavy sections and ethereal, dare I say beautiful clean sections, has always drawn me to this band. What ISIS do exceptionally well, is build their music in layers over time. You often don't realise the track lengths, as the music absorbs you and almost sends you into another realm. The drums help carry the clean sections along wonderfully well with the bass being prominent throughout and showing quality lines that break the typical 'follow the guitars or bass drum' ethos with most metal bands.
Tracks such as Glisten and Collapse and Crush showcase more of the bands' brilliant ability to meld dense sections with clean. Aaron's vocals sound utterly ferocious as he shouts. On later releases, he utilised his clean singing a lot more. There are snippets of it present on Celestial, but it is definitely at its rawest form. Deconstructing Towers boasts some absolutely monstrous riffs and driving rhythm sections which pummel the listener headfirst into post metal oblivion. However, there are a few more standout moments on the album that captivated my attention. Collapse and Crush holds host to quite possibly some of the best clean sections on the album, with the bass pumping through and the riffs alternating between lush chord sequences and minimal yet effective leads.
Undoubtedly one of the tracks that stands out the most on Celestial is C.F.T (New Circuitry and Continued Evolution). The eventual build up of the song, starting from a gentle, almost dreamlike clean section is pure brilliance and most captivating. As the song progresses, the wailing leads become more prominent and the simple yet very effective and well constructed drumming shines through.
The album ends with Gentle Time. After a misleading few clean strums of a guitar, the song launches into more dense, crushing riffs. I simply can't get enough of how the band used to pull off such heavy sounding music, yet still sound so full and interesting. Overall, for their first release, Celestial is fantastic. And the band continued to grow at an elevated rate (Oceanic and Panopticon being superior albums). On a final note, I'd like to say that the remastered version of this album is also very good and well worth a listen if you are a fan of the band. In conclusion, Celestial may be ISIS at their rawest, but it showcases a band that were as obsidian-esque in terms of heaviness as they are in consistency.
