RIIZE II — Six Tracks, One Clear Argument
Seven months is a long time to sit on momentum. RIIZE closed 2025 with ODYSSEY - their third consecutive million-seller - then played the Tokyo Dome, headlined Lollapalooza South America, and dropped a single in November to hold the line. II, their second mini-album out today via SM Entertainment and RCA Records, arrives with the question every comeback EP faces after a run like that: was any of it actually absorbed into the music, or did the group just get more famous?
The answer, across six tracks, is mostly yes - and occasionally, frustratingly, no.
II opens with "SOAR," and the choice to lead with the most sonically abrasive track on the record is deliberate. Straight-ahead drum hits, rough-textured guitar, and synths that cut rather than cushion - it sounds less like a K-pop opening statement and more like a band demanding you adjust to them. The lyrics frame it as defiance ("no matter what dangers they face"), but the production is the real argument. RIIZE have spent three years building a reputation on emotional pop - sincere, hook-forward, easy to love. "SOAR" is the sound of a group trying to complicate that reputation before you get comfortable with it. It works.
"Do Your Dance" follows, and here is where the EP earns or loses casual listeners. As a title track, it's engineered to deliver exactly what it promises: an uptempo fuse of hip-hop drums and electro-pop synths, a refrain built around the phrase "Head, hips, shoulders, toes" that maps directly onto performance choreography, and a 808 bassline underneath the chorus that gives the song physical weight it might not otherwise have. Haru - Epik High's Tablo's daughter, who passed a blind lyric-writing screening to earn sole credits here - keeps the writing economical and physical rather than reaching for profundity. The track doesn't try to mean anything beyond what it says. That restraint is the right call. The weakest moments in RIIZE's catalog have been when the emotional pop concept tips into vague sincerity; "Do Your Dance" goes the opposite direction and is better for it.
The middle third is where II gets genuinely interesting and slightly uneven. "D-D-Done" is a bass house track with a breezy looseness that Sungchan reportedly identifies as his favorite on the album, and it's easy to hear why - it's the least effortful piece here, in the best sense, the kind of track that coasts on a groove rather than asking the listener to follow a concept. "Overdrive" is harder to place: R&B and hip-hop textures, heavy bass, beat switches that feel designed to demonstrate range rather than serve the song. The transitions are technically clean but the track ends without having committed to an identity. It's the one moment on II where the "diverse colors" framing Eunseok described starts to feel like a liability - six different genres in six tracks can read as confidence or as indecision, depending on how deep each swing goes. "Overdrive" doesn't go deep enough.
"Like a Bomb" recovers. The funk-driven groove, the synth work that's colorful without being cluttered, and an extended middle section that takes its time - it's the b-side that most sounds like a group who has spent the past year performing in front of crowds large enough to demand physicality. You can hear the stage in it. Eunseok singled it out for its mainstream appeal, and he's not wrong, but that undersells it slightly. It earns that appeal.
The EP closes with "In a Loop," a bright pop anthem with drums that hit with more weight than the production suggests they will. Lyrically it's the most conventionally K-pop moment on the record - faith in relationships, cycles of time, hopeful atmosphere - and coming after five tracks that mostly resisted that register, it lands as release rather than formula. The fact that it closes the EP rather than opening it matters. RIIZE have learned something about sequencing.
There are still limits to what a six-track mini-album can do, and II runs into them. The record is most convincing when it's making a concentrated argument - "SOAR" and "Like a Bomb" feel like a coherent RIIZE, an evolved one. "Overdrive" and, to a lesser degree, the back half of "Do Your Dance" feel like the group demonstrating that they can, which is a different thing. The broader question the EP raises - whether "Emotional Pop" can stretch to accommodate alternative rock, bass house, and funk simultaneously without collapsing into a playlist - doesn't fully resolve here. That's not a failure; it's a legitimate tension for a group three years in, still figuring out which of their instincts to trust.
What II does establish, clearly, is that RIIZE are no longer interested in being the most approachable group in the room. "SOAR" as an opener is a statement of intent. Whether the next full album follows that instinct or retreats to safer ground will be worth watching. This EP gives them cover to go either way.
II is out now via SM Entertainment and RCA Records. RIIZE's [RIIZING LOUD] World Tour continues through 2026.
