The first time I saw Maruja I lost a tooth, which is exactly the kind of bodily harm I yearn for from upcoming bands’ shows. From the moment I heard the spasming sax against harsh walls of noise rock, I was a fan. No, an ardent defender. “Thank God,” I told anyone who’d listen, “Manchester finally has a band doing something new.” I waited nervously to see if this palpably hazardous energy could jump from their independently released EPs and stick the landing on a debut album. Sadly, what the four-piece have delivered is more toothless than me after the encore.
From teenagers to twenty-somethings, Maruja have spent most of their collective adolescence working on material, swapping out bandmates and genres along the way. Their long incubation siloed the then funk-inspired band away from Manchester’s terminal musical nostalgia, allowing them to discover a sound divorced from their hometown, often finding themselves bundled into Brixton’s Windmill scene. This first bore fruit in 2023’s independently released Knocknarea, a frenetic, noisy and jazz-inspired post-rock EP that was shortly followed up by Connla’s Well and Tír na nÓg. These works bagged Maruja the fervent adoration of online music forums, resulting in globetrotting tours of rowdy, packed-out shows before the four-piece had even released their full-length debut.
It’s a shame then that Pain to Power has squandered its potential. Maruja emerge from the studio with raucous rap-rock and meandering jam music in tow, resulting in an album full of the same songs several times over. By the end, listeners may feel they have deja vu. Fans may feel they have dementia.
The first track ‘Bloodsport’ sets the template, birthing the album with car-crash urgency before frontman and guitarist Harry Wilkinson raps over clicking drumsticks and rumbling bass grooves. It’s not long before Maruja’s saxophone calling-card honks into existence. The song’s chorus of spiraling sax followed by post-rock dawdle-to-crescendo is at first intriguing, but this is just the first of many.
Then comes ‘Look Down on Us’, a tubthumping, rap-rock protest for the 99%. Wilkinson rolls his Rs along more grumbling bass before belting the song’s title for some theoretical mosh pit. Politicians are “snakey”, it’s revealed, and corporations reap profit. Though naff, the near ten-minute track is one of the album’s most coherent. Irritatingly, it diverts to another Godspeed You! Black Emperor slowdown and crescendo, though later collapses into a welcome cacophony of hellish drone. ‘Born to Die’ is another highlight, where towards the seven-minute mark the band charges beyond safe frontlines, darting across sonic ideas, introducing clean staccato guitars, funky bass and stuttering solos with the kind of energy Michael Gira might give to swatting a fly with his face.
But these experimental sections are fleeting, and the Rage Against the Maruja shtick gets old a few tracks in. The haunting saxophone drone that helps introduce ‘Break the Tension’ succumbs to familiarity and retreats to the same solo we’ve heard several times already across the band’s short discography. Meanwhile, any variety brought by the spidery guitar work in ‘Trenches’ is lost within muddy drums and the same migraine-inducing compression that plagues the entire album.
Lyrically, the band also suffers – chewing the same topics and saccharine ideas. There are no stories in Pain to Power, no characters, only idioms and platitudes. We must choose love. Division is bad. We’re given messages so universal and vague that they’re spiritually and politically bereft. Pain to Power’s politics are tacked on, whether by song title (‘Zaytoun’) or by required reading Instagram caption. ‘Saoirse’ is a twinkling, headbutt nod to Irish struggle against British colonial rule and is openly dedicated (via pre-release announcements on the group’s Instagram and mailing list) to the people of Palestine. But Wilkinson’s cry that “It’s our differences that make us beautiful,” comes across as offensively simplistic when children are currently being blown to bits. Muslimgauze, this is not.
Despite the length of some of its songs, Pain to Power has little to say – in message or in music. The band bemoan their dissatisfaction with the UK’s long post-empire death rattle, but like our stagnating neoliberal island, Maruja are stuck in the habitual, with little sense of how to change things for the better.
