Labels: Ipecac
Review by: Sean Haughton
It has been a couple of years since isis were a regular fixture for me, and their split’s timing made a lot of sense. The outfit had done essentially everything it could possibly do with the template and I have approximately zero memory of ‘Wavering Radiant’ (their final album), which perhaps says something about the band’s ability to keep my attention at that point in their career. and so we reach the rarities compilation, something fairly inevitable for a band with Isis’ varied and often-prolific output.
The mixture of songs ranges from pointless to worthwhile, with 5 demos of later-period Isis album tracks, some covers, remixes, and other alternate versions and other things. straight off the bat, it’s fair to say the demos are exactly that and barely worth mentioning. Following those comes an instrumental 17-minute unreleased song which would have sat well on any recent Isis records that morphs from slow and gentle into that familiar rolling groove that anyone who is familiar with a copy of ‘Oceanic’ or ‘Panopticon’ will know. While it’s a worthwhile addition to fans, it’s hardly worth an entire disc.
‘Temporal”s second disc starts with a bit more urgency with an overdriven-to-fuck cover of ‘Streetcleaner’ by Godflesh but quickly loses me with a fairly questionable version of Sabbath’s ‘Hand Of Doom’. Throughout the album the overwhelming feeling is that it’s probably nice to have some of these things collected but that most of this will be familiar to ardent fans. Similarly, tracks like The Lustmord/Melvins remix of ‘Not In Rivers, But In Drops’ and the 2-minute drone of the title track pass by without me even noticing. There are some moments that make the listen worthwhile such as the inclusion of the succint and taut tracks from their split with The Melvins, and Thomas Dimuzo’s blissful transformation of ‘Holy Tears’ but again the release feels sort of redundant as these have already seen release in the past 5 years. The acoustic version is an unexpectedly nice touch but fails to really save anything and the question remains as to why this exists at all. For a band with such fine control over their aesthetic this is a collection that feels rushed and patched-together to give some sort of closure to desperate fans.
As with 98% of rarity releases, this one is doomed to solely attract people who are REALLY into Isis. The band’s discography beyond their full-lengths is daunting at first look and this is really no starting point. I’m not sure if there’s enough here to even really warrant a purchase from a completist. If you are interested in investigating a band that, for a short while, held a very interesting and influential position in metal I would urge you to investigate any one of their first four albums instead.