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| | village voice > music > Isis' Panopticon by Erik Davis |
 | | Unlike the nu-metal brats, though, Isis know that staying true to the essential economy of hardcore does not mean you can't go for the Big Picture, either in expansive sound, absurd song length (average here is eight minutes), or ambitious thematic concept. |
 | | Isis deserve their name, in other words, because they have achieved a genuinely epic sound, not by aping Scandinavian fl metal, but by melting down their own peculiar influences—including, most importantly, the dread commotions of their pals Neurosis—into a modern American hammer of the gods. |
 | | Because while the band's riffs are sludgerific, their greatness now turns as much on the softer stuff: layered, pensive, and sometimes downright pretty passages whose mellowness is not, in that tried-and-true metal formula, simply a palette cleanser for monster chords. |
| www.villagevoice.com /music/0452,davis,59584,22.html (425 words) |
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