Pain to Power by Maruja

For fans of Geordie Greep, Black Country, New Road, YHWH Nailgun, and punk-adjacent rock that’s also debatably rap music, Pain to Power by Maruja rallies the people in a hopeful psalm augmented by the tumultuous emotions of windmill scene post rock. As in previous Maruja releases, prominent melodic contributions from saxophone serve as the primary counterpoint to largely spoken vocals, giving each song a unique fingerprint through the combination of an anthemic riff and a memorable phrase. Continuing on their previous trajectory but with further increases in intensity, surrounding instrumentation provides a more straightforward post rock background, building grand swells of drums, guitar, bass, and strings to draw our attention to increasingly repetitious mantras. These guitars strike that classic post rock balance between harmonic darkness and ascending progressions, leading us from a place of pessimistic despair into a light that feels dimmer by the day. In an artistic landscape dominated by diverging paths of radical nihilism and existential dread, such messages of community-derived hope fuel our will to continue, nourishing our souls as we awaken to face another day.