A decade ago, Isis began life in Massachusetts; a few years
later, Isis packed up and traversed the continent to Los Angeles. Their
current cross-country trek, though, isn’t behind their recent In the
Absence of Truth; rather, it’s to commemorate the band having
reached the 10-year mark. “For me,” says guitarist Michael Gallagher,
“this is the longest time I’ve ever been involved in anything other
than family.” Isis was birthed with the potential for a wide-ranging
sound in their bones, and subsequent albums have seen them expand; on
their albums, textured, almost drone-like passages are interwoven with
magnificently crushing ones.
Gallagher also releases solo work under the name MGR
(singer/guitarist Aaron Turner does the same under the House of Low
Culture banner). “[It] started out as wanting to explore more mellow,
more ambient, texture-based things,” Gallagher explains. “Isis
certainly has that element throughout many of our records, but never
done to the extent that I wanted to explore on my own. That’s how it
started; fortunately for me, it’s turned into a different way of
writing songs, and I feel that it’s aided me in what I’ve brought to
the table in Isis.”
Conversing with Gallagher, the impression one gets of Isis is that
of a deeply meticulous band. Asked about the process of looking back at
the band’s discography for the anniversary tour, he points out that it
wasn’t necessarily a re-evaluation of earlier songs.
“I think the name of the game was to find stuff that we still
thought would move us and that people might actually want to hear.”
Isis audiences are wide in scope: from punks to textural mavens, from
veterans of the metal scene to shoegaze revivalists. It’s not every
band that can bring together these elements, uniting them to witness
music that’s as viscerally satisfying as it is intellectually
conceived. In the case of Isis, they’ve been doing this for a
decade—and talking with Gallagher, that seems like the most
logical thing in the world.