Old Man Gloom

If attaining Celestial heights with their first full-length wasn't enough for Boston's Isis, whose musical creations have constantly threatened to destroy the Earth through sheer sonic manipulation, their latest expulsion, Sgnl > 05, explores the more psychedelic, ambient and electronic aspects that orbit Isis's sonic mass while retaining its collapsed star density. Both thematically and musically, Signl > 05 is a continuation of Celestial; an aftershock to Celestial's tectonic upheaval. While still laden with their metallic drones and oppressive atmospheres that have established Isis has one of the pinnacles of aggressive music - "Divine Mother (The Tower Crumbles)," "Constructing Towers" - "Beneath Below" is a lumbering ambient movement with keyboards and the sparsest of beats, muted singing and atmospheric noise strung throughout. However, it is "Celestial (Signal Fills The Void)," remixed by Godflesh's Justin K. Broadrick, that ventures off into more electronic spiritual paths towards its finale while still retaining Isis's mosquito-drenched identity that pushes Isis's sound the farthest on this superb four-suite, five-track EP. Isis's Aaron Turner is also the thread that drives Old Man Gloom. What began as an act of immediacy has turned into a full-fledged band, with the addition of members of Converge and Cave In. Two new seminars demonstrate OMG's continuing simian ascent. Seminar II walks the same evolutionary path, structurally: short, damaging sonic barbs, stylistically similar to Isis's dirge or Buzzov*en's lamented hostility, yet unafraid to explore their more stoner rock leanings, intercut with ambient compositions, noise tracks and bizarre sonic manipulations, to form a fractured yet engrossing whole. While there has always been criticism of OMG's "noise/song/noise" format, Seminar III answers the question of what OMG would sound like if the combined their styles instead of separating them; even if they do so on a one-track, 30-minute endeavour that pushes OMG's ebb and flow into a stirring emotional movemen