"To hold onto an idea about something can be a very dangerous thing, because If you get attached to the way something was at any particular moment in time, your present feeling about it is probably never going to live up to that idea of what it was in the past." - Aaron Turner explains that Isis' split after 13 year was natural because Isis didn't want to recreate these feelings over and over.

The album " In the Absence of Truth "takes its title from a quote often attributed to Hassan-i-Sabbah (the Islamic mystic cult leader) : "Nothing is true, everything is permitted". When it comes to how this quote relates to the album's concept, Turner is again reluctant to reveal too much. "I'll just say that much of working on this record, for me, was about the power and nature of perception, and the ways in which it affects our behavior and the way we see the world," he says. "I'll just leave it at that, and people can draw their own conclusions."

Track titles explicitly reference Hassan-i-Sabah's garden "Firdous e Bareen" which means the Almighty Paradise and Dulcinea, a character in Don Quixote.In relation to Dulcinea, Turner does allow a hint at the meaning: "That is just toying with the idea of perception, and the very thin line between illusion and reality", he says

The album " Oceanic " reintroduces the water and female themes of past releases the Red Sea and Celestial through a story: A man at the brink of emotional numbness finds a female counterpart who completes him ("The Beginning and the End"). However, he soon finds that she has had a long-term incestuous relationship ("False Light", "Weight") with her brother ("Hym", "The Other"). This drives him to lose all hope, and he commits suicide through drowning ("from sinking sands, he stepped into light's embrace").
The entire story is described by frontman Aaron Turner in a radio interview and in more nebulous terms in the album's booklet

Aaron Turner is the owner of Hydra Head Records.