Recently, I got bored and submitted an application to a music publication. I won’t tell you which one, but I will tell you that one of their application questions interested me: Who is the most exciting artist in the world right now and why? There’s so many answers to this. Do you answer and talk about the devoted fandoms of Taylor and Charli? Do you write about what it means seeing Chappell blow up with a fantastic album and one of the greatest singles of all time? How about getting heavier and talking about Turnstile massively expanding the appeal of hardcore and punk? Playboi Carti exists! My pick was none of these. My pick was a 4 piece jazz rock band from Manchester, England: Maruja. They obviously did not reach out to me for my application.

photo from The Line of Best Fit – the only profile I could find

From what I can find, Maruja has officially released 15 songs. There is, quite literally, 3 EPs worth of music available for this band. Five of them are improvised. I cannot emphasize enough, every single one of the songs is one of the best I’ve heard this decade. They have 70 total minutes of music released, and not a single second has been wasted. Here’s your premise: what if we made post-punk with a all-world drummer and threw a saxophone over it? That’s it. That’s the entire gimmick. I’ve seen people describe this music as “jazz punk” but my god it’s so much more than that. Assuming people would burnout after 2-3 songs with this dynamic, Maruja‘s style completely rejects that.

This is some of the finest 22 minutes ever released. I cannot believe this was recorded and humans were capable of making music like this. A fully fledged experience, you’re exposed to 22 minutes where the drummer goes absolutely ballistic and you’re bombarded with lyrics about war & insecurity. Every single word is chanted to you. Knocknarea is Maruja‘s first EP, it is grander and showcases more ideas than most artists do in their entire catalogue. How do you follow this up?

13 months later, Maruja gave us Connla’s Well. The gang’s all here: spoken word vocals, post-rock builds and breakdowns, and some of the most powerful individual performances I’ve heard in years. The saxophone sounds like it’s being strangled. The guitar is being tortured. The drums are absolutely battered. Every individual song has so much passion and chaos; you are stuck holding on for dear life on the journey Maruja takes you.

I don’t know, man. What an EP. I would describe Knocknerea as hypnotic, Connla’s Well as passionate, and Tír na nÓg as immersive. There are no vocals on this EP. It is 22 minutes of improvised atmospheric jazz rock, where you are carried by guitars that come-and-go as they please, and a saxophone that is begging for you to follow it. By the end of the ride, you feel like you’ve completed a quest. Few bands have the ability to make an instrumental EP, even fewer have the guts to release it, and even less can make it sound good. In a vacuum, Tír na nÓg is probably my favorite 22 minutes of music this year.

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There’s a few recordings of the band performing. You’ve got this full show in England where there are full breaks and they are just ripping for minutes on end while blokes in the crowd go nuts. Low Four Studio hosted them for a studio session, and you can feel the band’s intensity. GARDEN popped out a 35 minute set where everyone looks possessed. Somehow, they sound just as good playing live as they do in studio sessions where the atmosphere is DENSE.

All of this is nice, what makes them the most exciting band in the world? Potential. This sound is RARELY explored, and the influence from yesteryear is palpable. Throwing a saxophone and immense individual-talent in with these explosive post-rock builds and punk vibes is building a recipe I cannot look away from. When the clock struck 2025 I was already foaming at the mouth hoping for some new music from Maruja. It was another EP. Music for Nations already scooped these guys up — they also have metal mainstays like Bury Tomorrow, Amon Amarth, and Killswitch Engage’s UK distribution, so getting a label isn’t an issue. My brain wanders dreaming what a full album could look like: atmospheric & engaging, a full-blown explosion of talent, and out-of-this-world performances combining ascetics and vibes of punk, shoegaze, jazz, post-rock, and new wave.

The only artist I’ve heard combine these sounds together in recent years is Clown Core. That project was meant to be absurd, and was intentionally over the top to dramatize the space between brass instruments & metal/punk while demonstrating talent. The only absurdity found in Maruja‘s early career is their talent, and how constricted these performances have been.

A world where the sounds of rock crumbling in on itself (akin to Swans) fighting with the connective tissue of jazz (like Money via Pink Floyd) delivered underneath possessive emotional lyrics (Joy Division) is the potential here. I am so eagerly awaiting the debut record and it would not shock me to see near unanimous praise when it releases. I don’t care when it comes out. I don’t even know if they’re working on it (can’t look it up). The Maruja project has the highest potential of any band I’ve heard since Fontaines D.C. put out Skinty Fia in 2022 or Sprain‘s 2020 release, As Lost Through Collision. Fontaines D.C. is actively reaching their potential, with last year’s fantastic release Romance, and Sprain released one of the greatest albums ever in 2023, The Lamb as Effigy, before breaking up. Every music listener, anyone that remotely cares about rock, and the greater music landscape should be hoping they pull off the former, rather than the latter. Each of Maruja’s released EPs has enough density to provide album-level enjoyment, but it’s the anticipation of a creative explosion in long-format the band makes Maruja the most exciting band in the world.

As of April 11th, 2025, the band has: 25.7K IG followers, 152.5K monthly Spotify listeners, and their most listened tune has a little over 2m listens. No major publication has released anything related to the band or any of their songs. The upcoming tour has a few English festivals, and a handful of dates in China.

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