EP Review: King Isis - 'SIRENITY'
King Isis’ third EP is messy in the best way.
There’s a certain magic that happens when an artist not only embraces contradiction but thrives within it. With SIRENITY, their third EP, King Isis doesn’t just explore duality - they dance in its chaos, crafting a soundscape that is raw, restless and radically unafraid.
The five-track collection is messy in the best way: emotionally tangled, sonically untethered and wholly committed to imperfection as power.
King Isis’ musical foundation runs deep, rooted in a legacy of generational artistry. Trained in classical piano on the same keys once played by their great-great-grandmother Omega King - one of Chicago’s first Black opera singers - Isis was raised on structure only to subvert it.
That tension between discipline and rebellion is stitched into every note of SIRENITY, where pristine musicality crashes into blown-out distortion, where fragility and fury hold hands.
The result is something that feels like more than a project; it’s an artefact of becoming. SIRENITY is the final chapter in a loose trilogy following 2023’s scales and 2024’s shed, both of which pushed Isis further into their own multiverse of genreless queerness. But this time, they’re not interested in being polished. They’re interested in being whole.
The EP erupts with PERMANENTLY BROKEN, a grunge-fuelled freefall that captures King Isis at their most unfiltered. It's a raucous, thrashing dive into emotional chaos, setting the tone for an EP that doesn't just explore brokenness, but lives in it unapologetically.
Where PERMANENTLY BROKEN explodes, by huge time the EP comes to a close, LATELY simmers - beginning as a quiet confession before rising into a full-bodied purge. Co-produced with Bartees Strange, it’s a moment of radical vulnerability: confronting cycles, shedding perfectionism and stepping boldly into the unknown.
In between these tracks, tuesday in la offers a pause. A lo-fi voice memo that feels like flipping through an old journal, the interlude is fleeting but intimate, grounding the chaos in something deeply personal, a glimpse of Isis mid-renewal.
But what makes SIRENITY so compelling is its refusal to offer resolution. Instead, it offers cycles - falling apart and stitching yourself back together, only to unravel once again.
There are touches of indie rock, alt-pop, garage grunge, bedroom acoustics and everything in between, but no matter the genre, the throughline is always emotional truth. Every track is a little jagged, and a little cracked, but King Isis isn’t chasing neat narratives or flawless aesthetics here.
With SIRENITY, they’ve created a space where identity, grief, queerness, rage and joy all exist at once - uncompromised and uncontained.
Words by Gemma Cockrell
