Palms

Patience is most definitely required to make the most of this album, for these songs take their time to unfold and make sense.

By expanding the sturm-und-drang of their old outfit’s forebears to incorporate a greater range of sounds and ideas, the ISIS boys ... have created the pitch-perfect playground for Moreno’s trademark ethereal vocals and lyrical intimations, and the result is utterly sublime.

ISIS diehards are going to automatically flock to this album while it might take a bit of outreaching to some Deftones fans to bring them over to it. Still, Palms is the partnership of like minds who get one another and their output is magical stuff.

For fans of the members' other groups, Palms' debut is an easy recommendation that will leave listeners enjoying the similarities and getting lost exploring the differences.

At others, one can't help but wish for a little more "oomph," but it only takes a few spins to detach oneself from the hype and respect the admirable groundwork laid down here for future greatness.

The band is sleepwalking down the path of least resistance, to the point where “Tropics” is little more than a song about relaxing at the beach that sounds exactly like relaxing at the beach.

There is power in repetition and though Palms’ layered soundscapes do not lend themselves to conventional choruses or snappy hooks, the collective stands firm, even if you could arguably swap arrangements and vocal lines around from track to track and not disrupt proceedings.

Chino Moreno and three-fifths of Isis are the soaring sum of their soaring parts.

Palms is hardly a failed effort, but as a cohesive whole it does seem to display the band padding out a brevity of material with substantial bloat in order to satisfy the demands of a traditional album running time.

This is definitely worth a listen, whether you’re a fan of ISIS and/or Deftones or not; it’s perfect music to help you melt into a lover.

The unfortunate truth is that Palms isolates and expands upon some of the least interesting attributes of its creators.

Dreamy and textural, Palms is quite good at evoking what it’s meant to, and instrumentally all the musicians here play an impressive game.

Palms suffers from a frustrating shortage of attention-perking moments