Roy Jurgens on July 8th, 2020

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Iress’ music is a heavy, warm blanket on a scary, dark and bitter cold night. Comforting, yet with the understanding that should one venture from beneath the covers, there be monsters about.

Their latest single “Underneath,” is a compelling example of that realm, with Michelle Malley’s emotive and ethereal vocals framed by drop-D, reverb-laden crunch and tom-tom thunder, exploding into a shimmering and cathartic chorus. Guitarist Alex Moreno and Malley explain their willful surrender: “‘Underneath’ is about the desire to give in to self-destructive patterns to feel numb, falling headfirst into that dark place that can be both scary and comforting. ‘So inviting, I dive, blue and bent,’ I imagine walking slowly into the sea and letting it engulf me.”

Iress music has all the depth, beauty and violence of the North Atlantic, with 100-foot icy waves that crest and come crashing down one minute and then calming into a glimmering sun kissed ocean the next. They’ve found a unique sound that traverses the edges of doom metal and fuses it with 4AD ’80s-era shoegaze. They build somber cathedrals of sound, reverent in a stoic darkness, accented with stabs of light piercing through the stained glass.

The foursome of  Malley, Moreno, bassist Michael Maldonado and drummer Glenn Chu have been making their beautiful racket for several years now, dating back to their first album, “Prey,” released in 2015 when they were known as IRIS. “Underneath” — which was recorded and produced by Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, mixed by Collin Pastore and mastered by Jett Galindo — follows their initial single release, “Shamed,” both of which will be on Iress’ sophomore album “Flaw,” to be released this fall.

||| Stream: “Underneath”

||| Also: Stream “Shamed”

||| Previously: “Crown of Losers”