Philadelphia’s Rosetta made quite a splash with their debut album, The Galilean Satellites, by delivering not one, but two discs produced so as to be played simultaneously on two separate stereos. This allowed enterprising, dual hi-fi enabled listeners to sit within a converging vortex of post-metallic sound, not unlike the inky depths of space conjured by the band’s lyrics. But now what? How can they possibly top such an ambitious enterprise with a second opus in 2007′s Wake/Lift that says all it has to say with but one CD? Simple: don’t separate into two halves what can just as effectively be presented as a single whole. Who the hell owns two CD players anyway? All of these silly “more is better” debates aside, the fact of the matter is that Wake/Lift pretty much picks up exactly where The Galilean Satellites left off: with a series of densely constructed trance-metal epics, as rife with futuristic, prog-ambient sophistications as they are with visceral primal sludge — but arguably more fluid and satisfying in their violently alternating mood swings than anything that came before. Suitably colossal highlights, “Red in Tooth and Claw” and the self-explanatory “Monument” bookend the album like twin monoliths, gently ebbing, flowing, swelling and crashing thunderously upon themselves for upwards of 12 minutes each. In between, the three-part “Lift” and its singular counterpart, “Wake,” gradually crescendo at their own, at times almost too deliberate rates; which leaves only the uniformly mellow and instrumental “Temet Nosce” (Latin for “Know Thyself”) to float away with the tides, evanescing in cascading echoes and chiming tones, and couched in hazy percussion. Lyrically speaking, Rosetta’s eyes are still very much drawn towards the stars (and particularly their favorite Saturnian moon, Europa), but a contrasting choice of distinctly earth-bound, wild, and primordial imagery helps to propagate the music’s modern/ancient/civilized/savage dichotomy (think the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey) — even if all of this is largely rendered moot by unintelligible screams. On a cynical note: Isis devotees can always claim that, for all of their sonic might and grandiose ascents towards triumphant catharsis, these songs still drink quite brazenly from their favored bands’ creative wellspring; but let’s not forget that every genre-defining artist has an even earlier stylistic instigator (Isis’ being Neurosis, among others), and that’s no good reason to dismiss Rosetta’s truly inspired songwriting throughout Wake/Lift. What was that stuff about two CDs again? – Eduardo Rivadavia