ISAW

Adelaide has started to produce some high quality heavy acts in the last five or six years, and this four piece are no exception. Their debut album utterly destroys all in its path, and then some.

These guys do straight up modern heavy metal precisely the way this writer likes it: balls out; ultra-aggressive but with a little melody thrown in; massive fat grooves everywhere; precision, muscular musicianship and ultra-meaty but crystal clear sound (partly courtesy the great man Forester Savell, who mixed and mastered it. Is there anything this man can’t do?).

‘The Identity’ is a collection of 12 bruising, blistering metal tracks guaranteed to melt speakers and melt faces. These boys are absolutely set in their direction, that of Pantera/Machine Head/Lamb of God influenced metal, and they pull it off with absolute conviction and strength. However they are also forging an identity that is all their own. There are thrashier moments, melodic elements, some tasteful melodic and shredding leads and real dynamics thrown into the mix amid the groove based carnage. And virtually everything works a treat.

The album opens with absolute maximum impact, first track ‘Catch 22’ blasts out of the speakers with pure screaming fury, putting one in mind of the way Pantera’s ‘Great Southern Trendkill’ opens. And the sledge hammering effect of the record barely lets up for a second from there. Each and every track has something to offer the listener, with best tune honours probably going to ‘Shot Down’, with its steam train momentum and killer, rumbling, double kick driven chorus that is catchy as all hell. ‘Drones’ is also worthy of mention, all off-kilter melodies and rhythms, it builds in a menacing fashion to a howling, devastating climax.

Yet another highlight of this band’s sound is singer Matt Kavanagh’s voice. Extremely mature in his technique and delivery, every note he hits, from the low end to the screams to the soaring melody is absolutely dead on the money. He channels Anselmo, Flynn and even Fafara at different times, but also makes it absolutely his own. A real vocal talent.

This album is the best meat and potatoes metal record these ears have heard in a long, long time. Australian or otherwise I have absolutely nothing against Adelaide, it’s a beautiful city with a great passion for beer, wine and the best kind of football. All very important things in their own right. But it’s a bit of a dead end for heavy music acts, so one can only hope these guys can break out of the city of churches (also very inappropriate for metal) and bring their brand of musical mayhem to a slightly more appreciative locale. Going by ‘The Identity’ they’re one of the best heavy acts in the country at the moment, they just need to get themselves heard more. - The Metal Forge

Adelaide’s ISAW has just released its debut album and it’s a cracker. The Identity showcases the bands influences from metal core to death metal and everything in between and as a first album it’s got some grunt.

I always get excited about Australian metal but I also get a bit weary of the snobbishness of some metal fans; it’s as if home-grown metal isn’t quite up to par with overseas offerings. ‘Fuck you!’ I say. It’s all music and it’s all good.

The Identity opens with the single Catch 22, a roaring, shouting mass of energy that assaults the attention (and ears) of the listener. It’s got bags of catchy guitar hooks and the chorus will suck you in. Coupled with a lovely middle section, it’s what an opening track should be. A massive tick on the guitar and drum work. The Black Stone has absolutely thunderous drums from Kim Fiddaman and Matt Kavanagh delivers the vocals with vehemence. He has a pretty good vocal range which he uses to full effect, mixing both clean and dirty vocals. Another catchy chorus with sweet guitars. Then we’re into Shot Down which is heavy but accessible. The slow chugging guitar and bass are balanced against the short, stabbing chordwork. Three songs in and ISAW’s style is apparent; lot’s of heavy chord followed by squealing guitars.

Gods For Guns has a handpicked intro with some spoken word to accentuate the heaviness of the song, then it launches into a massive roar and guitars to get the pit moving. There are furious guitars and bass (although there could always be more, you know how I love bass...) here and the twin guitar work of Leigh Vergou and Steven Dennis is incredibly saucy. Blood Stains The Memory has a huge sound (the album was produced by Forrester Savell) and riffs to claw your face off and then it’s a radio-friendly (read ‘unheavy’) chorus that fades to military drums. Then it’s back into the face-clawing riffage. This track’s all over the place. Nice.

Track six is Sickness In Visions and it’s roaring. The production on this album is top notch and the fretboards of all concerned get a severe work-out. Horizons is next with another mellow picked intro dripping in echo and reverb. Suddenly there are riffs like hammers and some more spoken (or is it sampled?) word; it’s slow, it’s heavy,and there are some delightful lead guitars over the top of the other instruments. It’s a sudden finish and we’re into A Synthetic Ending which is massive. You have to play this album at eleven and ISAW would have to be awesome as a live act. The chords are like bombs dropping on your face.

Remember Shame opens with what sounds like drunken chanting – perhaps it’s meant to be spooky but it isn’t to my ear. For me it’s the weakest track so far but it’s still sound and it’s unpretentious; something I love about Australian metal. Colour Blind has a nice switch between vocal styles and Drones is quite similar in style and structure to the preceding track. Mid-way there are some gorgeous drum fills leading into supreme riffage. Kavanagh sounds like he’s screaming himself to death and I’m loving it.

Final track Dead Inside takes us out on a big one; the sound on this album is huge and this track shifts from madness to gentle and back again via some squealing guitars. I would have liked to have heard some more of Seb Bohm’s bass but as a first album, this is pretty fucking good. Micky Strong’s article (somewhere on the MaF site) gives some good background on this band. Get the album. See them live. - Metal as Fuck

LOCAL EP REVIEW – ISAW
The one and only disappointment in this debut recording from Adelaide’s ISAW is
the fact that it’s only three tunes and over WAY too quickly! But boy do they
pack some punch into those three tracks.
Appropriately titled opener ‘Fire’ veritably leaps out of the speakers with
absolute ferocity and hits you directly between the eyes with it’s percussive
driven power. But it offsets that aggression magnificently with a beautiful
melodic chorus that never outstays it’s welcome. Further dynamics are provided
by an alternatively balls-out and melodic breakdown section towards the end.
Next is ‘Let Me Breathe’, which shows another side of ISAW. Atmospheric, but
with moments of thrash, and another nicely written melodic chorus, before
leading onto the final onslaught.
True dynamics are difficult to accomplish within the framework of only three
songs. But they manage it very nicely indeed with the ballad-like acoustic
intro of ‘Tear Me Up’. Don’t be fooled though, this ain’t no ballad, it’s
possibly the most aggressive piece on the EP, with singer Matt howling his
lungs up and jagged riffage coming at you from all angles.
To say these three songs leave you wanting more is a true understatement. One
can only hope that a full album is on it’s way in the not too distant future!
This EP gets **** - Buzz Magazine

2008 Self Titled Demo

Reviewed by Dorothy Pawlowski

Published online 24 February 2010

The first thing I noticed when I unpacked Isaw's self-titled 3 track debut CD was the snap on the back cover of five "strapping young lads" posing before a no-nonsense industrial background and looking serious. The same style of picture is repeated inside the CD booklet and this, coupled with the close-focus eye graphic and saw-blade title font on the front cover, led me to suspect that I would not be reviewing a string quartet. Which is a good thing really: if you’re flipping through the CD rack looking for metal, you would definitely stop and look twice at this one.

“Serious” is a word that applies to more than the cover art on this CD. A perusal of the text indicates that Isaw take itself seriously as a band and extend this to their appreciation of the talents of other artists also. They list their musical tastes as extending from rock via various metal sub-genres through to death metal and this is borne out by the music.

The CD opens with “Fire”, 5 minutes plus of solid 4/4 fast-paced chugging metal featuring impressively aggressive vocals, interspersed with breaks into contrasting 6/8 melodic sections where the vocals change to an altogether more lyrical style. I’ve heard this done before in this type of music and the effect is often diluted by the singer’s inability to work well across techniques, however Isaw manage to carry off the trick. I liked the way that one of the two (panned) guitars drops out occasionally and leaves the other alone in the left channel. It’s refreshing that someone has remembered that stereo offers us the option of spreading the music around in our binaural perception. “Fire” climaxes with a half-time coda which polishes it off nicely I think, and leads us into the super-saturated guitar opening of Track 2, “Let Me Breathe.

Similar in overall flavour to “Fire”, with contrasting lyrical and heavy sections, “Let Me Breathe” makes a feature of tight vocal harmonies and some under-mixed growled vocals to good effect. The instrumental performances throughout this demo are faultless and this track is the first that really displays the lead guitarist’s undoubted skills. “Let Me Breathe” winds itself into the finish with some really manic chugging, screaming and double-kicking and, although I found the production of the double-kick was perhaps a little unsubtle for my tastes, the song finished before it had time to really irritate me.

The finale, “Tear Me Up” offers an acoustic-guitar introduction which bursts into a powerful track featuring antiphonal vocals and some clever rhythmical variations. Of the three tracks, this last was definitely the most fun for me and I think that using it to finish was a sound tactic.

As with the musical performance and apart from my drum quibbles as above, the production on this demo is crisp and flawless which is a characteristic borne out by other CDs I’ve heard emanating from this studio. Since Isaw appear to be doing a bit of live work, I can only hope that they will have enough material to grace us with a full-length release in the near future.
- MusicSA