Released on Halloween — make of that what you will — Ultima pt.I is the opening chapter of something clearly much bigger. Fort Worth, Texas quartet EYERIS have built their career on patient, sprawling post-metal that owes as much to Tool and Neurosis as it does to Mastodon, and this four-track EP suggests they’re reaching for a new level of ambition.
The premise is dystopian, even apocalyptic: a world under the thumb of a “supreme overlord,” inner lives drowned by external control. It’s not subtle thematically, but the music that wraps around these ideas is sophisticated enough to carry the weight. This isn’t sloganeering dressed in down-tuned guitars. It’s genuine exploration of what it feels like to lose agency in a world that’s accelerating past human comprehension.
The Centrepiece
“Drowning” is the record’s unambiguous peak and one of the finest pieces of post-metal I’ve heard in recent memory. At nearly nine minutes, it builds from near-silence through interlocking guitar figures that gradually compound into something genuinely overwhelming. The vocal performance — raw and searching — is used sparingly in the EP’s verse sections but unleashed with full force as the track crests. The final two minutes are simply huge.
“The High King” functions as the album’s most structurally complex piece, a seven-minute statement that shifts tempo and mood in the manner of a prog metal suite. There are Opeth influences here — particularly in the guitar interplay — though EYERIS never lose their own identity in the borrowing.
The Setup
The intentional incompleteness of pt.I will frustrate listeners who need closure. “Questions” and “Web of Lies” bookend the release satisfyingly enough, but the piece is designed to leave you wanting pt.II with real urgency. Whether that constitutes a flaw or a strength depends on your tolerance for the serialised release model.
What’s not debatable is the quality of execution here. EYERIS have made something sharp, heavy, and genuinely moving. They’re a band worth watching as this project unfolds.
The record shifts gears across its runtime: “Web of Lies” drives hard — the kind of tempo that keeps the pressure on without going full sprint, while “Drowning” finds its footing in slow-to-mid territory, built for atmosphere over momentum — the contrast keeps it from feeling like one long undifferentiated push. the guitar work sits deep in the distortion — riffs are felt as much as heard, individual notes dissolving into a dense, saturated mass. The low end is immense — it shows up before the rest of the music does, a physical presence you feel in your chest before your brain processes it as sound. The mix is sealed tight — almost no shimmer or air in the upper register, which gives everything that suffocating, close-quarters density.
Standout tracks: Drowning, The High King