- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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They’ve pushed themselves on this album, striving to achieve something honestly different to what was released before it. Occasionally they’ve fallen short of perfection, but for the most part this album is a certifiable success.
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Despite a couple brief dull spots, the ingredients are so carefully selected and masterfully performed that the collection creates a pretty endlessness, existing at its best as one long take of dark-n-stormy post-rock.
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In the Absence of Truth is as solidly explosive and as adventuresome as Panopticon, but their elemental control over the music is greater, therefore creating a more even production.
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Every strong point is matched by a weaker one, but there is never an extremity of either.
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The songs are still long, the rhythms are still organic, and in general Isis still sounds like Isis.
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Underwhelming.
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BlenderEven if the high-minded concepts prove elusive, no worries. [Nov 2006, p.138]
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Alternative PressIt's certainly a leap further into the ethereal weirdness that defined 2004's shoegaze- and electronics-inspired Panopticon. [Nov 2006, p.192]
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SpinTruth subverts metal's natural will to power with dreamy, ambient passages that are never as sublime as the band clearly thinks they are. [Dec 2006, p.98]
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UncutThe lurch towards conventionality has exposed Isis' limitations: their paucity of melodic ideas, the pompous drumming, the lack of wit or soul. [Jan 2007, p.100]
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Q MagazineIt's a powerful formula, but one the band perfected with their 2002 album Oceanic. [Dec 2006, p.141]
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BillboardThe dynamics and musicianship of songs like "Not in Rivers, but in Drops," "1000 Shards" and "Holy Tears" reveal a band at the top of its game. [4 Nov 2006]
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They remain a fantastic band, constructing their own cities of sound, a strange architecture with wine-dark interiors.
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The New York TimesIt’s still unclear where this band is going. [23 Oct 2006]
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In the process of adding new facets to their sound, Truth winds up reinforcing self-imposed limitations.
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Alas, it feels like In the Absence of Truth finds the band both spinning its wheels and running out of ideas.
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It’s the sound of a band knowing how to execute the formula to near-perfection, each lengthy song teasing us, ebbing and flowing hypnotically, tantalizingly hinting at a huge crescendo of sonic pyrotechnics that doesn’t quite arrive in full. In other words, a comfortable tension.
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Theirs is music brimming over with passion first explored, then exploded.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 25 out of 28
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Mixed: 2 out of 28
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Negative: 1 out of 28
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Oct 14, 2015
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ChampiodiPiJul 14, 2009
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EricCAug 25, 2008