Irist: Rising To The Challenge

There have been a lot of narrow minded statements being made in recent times that the world of music is becoming stale and everything has already been done before. They couldn’t be more wrong, there hasn’t been a more fascinating and exciting time to be a fan of music in a long time with a sea of incredibly talented and forward thinking musicians coming to the forefront. A shining example of this is Atlanta based quintet IRIST who are posted to take the world by storm with their debut release Order Of The Mind.

“We’ve put so much work into this album,” states frontman Rodrigo Carvalho. “We were writing for a good year and a half on this album, which was very intense but we spent a lot of time on each song to make sure we got all the details down. The theme of the album lyrically speaking is all about overcoming challenges, which can be of any nature. Physical, psychological or otherwise and all the songs convey this and the feeling of overcoming those kind of challenges. Some songs use different images or devices to convey this but we also wanted to focus on the pain that may come with those kind of situations.”

To ensure that their vision was met with this release IRIST travelled to the UK to record the album. “We heard the drum sounds on CONJURER‘s Mire album and we immediately thought ‘who has done this!? We need to work with this guy!’ so we met with Lewis Johns and worked with him at The Ranch in Southampton. He is such a nice guy and a great guy to work with. We went there to record an album and left with a friend,” discusses Rodrigo. “The process was very smooth, especially for us doing our debut album. We were super ready for it as we had done a lot of demo’s beforehand but we had a lot of anticipation and anxiety because so much can go wrong. Once we got there, saw the place and met Lewis we had tonnes of fun. Every day when we had finished our work we went out and saw the sights and it was also great to get that cultural experience in a place we’ve never been before.”

The band have released a couple of singles so far to give us a taster of what to expect and these tracks all display different facets of the bands unique and inviting sound. “So far we’ve been very excited as we’ve had a lot of good feedback,” Rodrigo says. “We chose our singles carefully and started with Burning Sage as it is quite a unique and aggressive song that we think best encompasses the overall sound of the band. We have also released Severed after that as it has clean vocals and helps show other dimensions to the band. We have chosen Creation which will be our third single release that will also show the diversity we have to offer.”

IRIST had arranged a listening party in their home city of Atlanta, Georgia prior to the album release as a way of giving back to the community which has helped show them support in their infancy. Unfortunately due to ongoing concerns relating to the global Coronavirus pandemic this has had to be put on hold. “It’s kind of a blow to us but we feel so fortunate as there are so many bands who were already on tour in Europe and have had to go through the ordeal of getting home safe,” explains Rodrigo. “Hopefully this won’t last too long. We’re so excited for Damnation Festival in the UK so we hope we can still have the opportunity to play for you guys. It still feels like a dream to us that Monte Conner signed us and we really just want to go on tour and play as many places as we can.”

Order of the Mind is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.

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