review by: Joshua

Apparently Irepress have been around in some incarnation or another for a number of years now. After some internal upheaval and existential angst of whether or not to continue on as a group they’ve reemerged as a four piece instrumental ensemble, and there’s really only one thing to say about this version: "watch out." And to all the other budding instrumental groups out there, you’ve been put on notice – the bar has been set high out of reach, might as well just go home. Hell, these guys may even have those mighty behemoths Pelican and Explosions in the Sky looking furtively in the rearview mirror on their next cross-country tours. Yes, these guys are that good.

Remember when Cave-In made the stylistic leap from destructive post-hardcore / metalcore killing crew to the more refined, brawny, heavier take on Radiohead? Irepress takes a similar approach, adds in an expansive, anything-is-possible stance worthy of Isis, and run it for all it’s worth. Their sound is a conjuring full of punishing metallic riffs and bombast counterbalanced by melodic passages and harmony interludes that are so stirringly gorgeous you may just want to bury your head in your arms and weep for having been exposed to their being.

Samus Octology is a post rock record that desperately wants to be metal while it’s futilely trying to shrug off the melodic intrusions that are born out of seemingly random song structures that have hidden direction. It’s simultaneously all these and none, each song at war with itself; yet the conflict creates rather than destroys, a cleansing birthed from fire.

Rhythms are deconstructed and built back up again as melodies, woven like spider webs, trapping those rhythms in arcing, crystalline strands. Those same melodies are torn apart by machine gun riffs and convulsive drumming only to be rebuilt again and again. This milieu repeats itself through a distinctly non-linear path and odd time signatures that don’t feel odd at all – the shifts are abruptly smooth, gliding from one station to the next or buttressed comfortably against one another at crazy angles that possess covert logic.

Every journey has a first step, right? The pure joy of Samus Octology is that from note one you’re in the middle of a thousand mile walk, blissfully unaware of how you already got so far while having no idea, nor caring, how much farther you have to go. (8.5/10)