World in Ruins

Although Isolert was formed in 2015, I just found out about them with their latest full length album, World in Ruins. Isolert is a three member band from Volos, Greece and they have released a demo, an EP, two splits and two full length albums. Their latest one is called World in Ruins and it contains seven compositions of overall duration of about forty minutes. It was released on 11th of November in 2020 in digital, in limited to 300 copies LP and in limited to 500 copies CD format by Nihilistische KlangKunst. Later in February of 2021 it was also released in limited to 50 copies cassette format by Fucking Your Creation Records. By the cover you can get a really accurate feeling of what this album is about and along with the tracks’ titles you can safely guess that you are about to listen to misanthropic and hateful Black Metal. Your guess is right but is it just that?

No it is not. Isolert play a fast paced, hateful Black Metal, in the same vein of the Scandinavian, old school Black Metal scene, with the classic tremolo riffing, the blasting drumming, the frozen atmosphere and of course the misanthropic and hateful attitude. Apart from the above, the band drifts to depressive sounds and feelings a lot, adding a different kind of self – destructing darkness to the album, unleashing all this hate, not only towards the world but also towards themselves. Other interesting elements that you will find here and there, are inspired by the classic Heavy Metal, Doom or even some Depressive – Epic, blending an interesting sound palette for the final result. The last element that caught my attention is the female vocals that are present only in one song but add a very nice touch to the composition. The songs’ duration is around five or six minutes, except for the last one which is ten minutes long, and with a nice, straightforward structure, they manage to maintain the interest of the listener and avoid becoming tedious.

In general, the performance of the band is very good. The guitars, both for their distorted parts and their acoustic ones, are played with absolute accuracy and professionalism, but at the same time they express the feelings so vividly and passionately. The bass is inaudible, so the songs lack the proper depth that they should have. The drums have really interesting lines, with a lot of blasting parts, slow, atmospheric passages and technical changes. The drummer delivers his lines with so much energy but also stability and accuracy. Their sound though, is a little flat and muffed. Concluding with the performance of the musicians, the vocalist has given a lot of thinking in his singing and his performance is really passionate and expressive, with a lot of changes in the color of his tone or expression, he adds a somewhat theatrical element to the compositions, he is the one responsible to deliver the final blow to the listener. The production is quite flat and a little noisy giving a result not suitable for the work of Isolert. The mixture is also not good enough, as the bass is almost absent and there are a lot of parts that the drums cover the guitars and vice versa.

In conclusion, apart from the problems with the production and the mixture, I believe that World in Ruins is a very good release that shows a lot of potential for the future. My favorite songs, if i have to choose, are ‘Fire, Ash, Blood’, a very powerful way to begin an album, ‘World in Ruins’, I guess it’s the title track for a reason, and ‘Light… Has Abandoned Us’, in which they show more complex forms in composing songs. Surely, I will try to find somewhere their previous releases and keep an eye on them in the future. This one would be really appreciated by those of you who like old school Scandinavian Black Metal with heavy depressing elements. It is definitely worth a listen.