Celestial

After a run of EPs this is the band's first full-length. The EP SGNL>05, released a year later, was drawn from these same sessions, and Aaron Turner calls the two "part of the same whole" — they were separated because a double album for a first full-length would have been too much to ask of a listener. Besides the ordinary CD and LP there is an edition that pairs the two. Turner has said the album is about privacy eroding as technology advances, the subject he would return to on Panopticon in 2004; here, in his own words, it is handled in a more primitive way. The towers that keep appearing in the titles belong to that theme. Decibel placed it 53rd among the metal records of the decade, writing that it is usually seen as a transitional record between the early work and the post-metal benchmarks, but that it holds up in ways different from the later albums. Rock Sound put it third in its albums of 2001 and Metal Hammer named it one of the twenty best metal albums of 2000. Ipecac reissued it in 2013 with new artwork by Turner and a remaster by James Plotkin. The running order here is the original's as printed.