Pitchfork: Isis Plans Spring North American Tour

Isis may be busy salting more slabs of delicious, monolothic metal to feed their ravenous fans, but they've found time in their hectic schedule to tour this spring. Speaking to Pitchfork via email, the band explained, "Basically, the tour will be an east and west coast thing. We didn't want to interrupt the writing too much so we decided not to do the whole US." Sorry, middle America.

Horror flick soundtrack buffs Zombi will accompany Isis throughout the tour, with These Arms Are Snakes helping in the beginning and D�lek coming in at tour's end to steal the show. Or share the show. We haven't heard of that much ambient/experimental metal in the same place at the same time outside of an Ipecac Records staff meeting. Oh, wait... Dates:

03-28 San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall *#
03-29 Redding, CA - The Dip *#
03-30 Portland, OR - Loveland *#
03-31 Seattle, WA - Neumos *#
04-01 Vancouver, British Columbia - Richard's on Richards #
04-02 Eugene, OR - WOW Hall #
04-04 Orangevale, CA - The Boardwalk *#
04-06 San Diego, CA - The Casbah #
04-07 Pomona, CA - Glass House #
04-08 Los Angeles, CA - The Knitting Factory #$
04-26 Montreal, Quebec - Theatre National ^
04-27 Toronto, Ontario - Lee's Palace ^
04-28 Cleveland Heights, OH - The Grog Shop %#!
04-29 Buffalo, NY - Showplace Theatre #%!
04-30 Washington, DC - The Black Cat %#
05-01 Richmond, VA - Hyperlink #%
05-02 Baltimore, MD - The Ottobar %#@
05-03 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church #%@
05-04 New York, NY - Avalon #%
05-05 Cromwell, CT - Cromwell Knights of Columbus #%
05-06 Cambridge, MA - Middle East Downstairs #%

* with These Arms Are Snakes
# with Zombi
$ with Butcher
^ with Mare
% with D�lek
! with Russian Circles
@ with Torche

Fans can expect a few releases available soon from Isis, and though we shouldn't hold our breath for a new studio album, they probably won't be cranking out filler either. First off, Isis plans to add a fourth disc to their ongoing live release series, with the latest CD available by the time the tour starts. Another release in the pipeline is a live DVD/tour documentary that will include "unreleased footage and 'behind the scenes' stuff filmed by Seldon Hunt." Is it just me, or does that sound like a porn star name?

Isis guitarist Mike Gallagher's solo project MGR (stands for Mustard Gas and Roses, a la Kurt Vonnegut) will release its debut album, Nova Lux in March on Neurot Recordings. Drummer Aaron Harris has recently been working on a project called Los Angeles Digital Noise Academy with Ken Andrews, formerly of Failure.