When Maruja first turned heads in the UK a good eight years ago with their self-titled EP, they were still a bit of an insider tip. That hardly changed with the EPs “Explicit Trickery” (2017) and “Compassion” (2019), although the extremely talented quartet easily outdid other bands from Manchester with their PR campaign. Then came the pandemic – and something changed. Suddenly, Maruja crashed into the British post-punk revival like meteorites into the Siberian taiga with legitimate uber-songs such as “Rage”, “Thunder”, and “Zeitgeist”, which are capable of appeasing even the pickiest of nitpickers. All that was followed by the EP “Knocknarea” (2023), which is nothing less than a storm of saxophone-fuelled art rock, jazz, and post-hardcore that is sure to make your pulse race. This year has seen the release of the follow-up, “Connla’s Well”, on which the band creates a goddamn monument to itself in just over 20 minutes. Forget any short-lived hype: This band is making history.