ALL MONSTERS by MX LONELY

In MX LONELY’s world, monsters are multifaceted things. They’re the creatures we used to imagine lurking in the shadows as children; the all-too-real evildoers who abuse their power or line their pockets with suffering; the vices and flaws that we grapple with throughout our lives, and what we can become while under their grip. Even the band’s name comes from synthesist/vocalist Rae Haas’ nickname for a shadowy figure that would haunt them during sleep paralysis. On their debut full-length album ALL MONSTERS, the Brooklyn-based band search dark corners, force open doors and exhume these monsters, via a heavy, murky alt-rock sound that’s equally streaked with beauty.

“Most of the lyrics center around shadow work; internal and external monsters,” Haas says. “I think a lot about the neurodivergencies and the mental illnesses that make you feel like you’re a bad person at times. ALL MONSTERS is about, instead of killing yourself, killing your monsters. Destroying each and every one of these ideas about yourself by bringing it to light.”

The band members — Haas, guitarist Jake Harms and bassist Gabriel Garman — originally met at AA meetings, while pursuing various musical projects of their own. Bonding over everything from Pixies, Elliott Smith and Weezer to Chat Pile, Show Me The Body and black midi, they began during the pandemic to work on songs that Harms had written as a solo project. First releasing the album Dog under the name v0idb0ys in 2020, they officially became MX LONELY in 2022, shortly before playing their first show. They continued with the EPs Cadonia in 2022 and SPIT in 2024.

From the start, the live show was an essential component of MX LONELY. “We had a song where Rae would go out into the crowd, and it changed how we wrote, to see Rae be a lead singer like that,” Harms says. “[From then on] it really was centered around Rae being able to move, and kind of incite the audience.” The band began to combine that viscerality and intensity with their love for softer, more intimate music and the introspection that it allowed. “The songs are played in a version of an Elliott Smith tuning, and I think we just want to take that energy and do it louder,” Harms says, with Haas adding: “It’s taking feelings that are usually reserved for something more [introspective], and [combining it with] the sort of release that happens when you make music at a decibel that allows your brain to stop thinking.”

“I think the music tries to challenge people,” Haas continues. “I do a lot of crawling on top of people and laying on top of people… it’s like shocking the system a little bit with the inhibitions you’re able to let go of.”

As their first entirely self-recorded release, ALL MONSTERS sees the band capturing a live, immediate, analogue sound which embodies the feeling of their live show, while also creating a more longform and nuanced experience than they have before. In both sound and scope, it’s an unapologetically big album, with its cavernous guitars, soaring vocals and hulking low-end stretching into the longest songs MX LONELY have ever made. They explore lostness and self-sabotage on the opening track “Kill The Candle”; gender dysphoria on the downcast, creeping “Big Hips”; and the thorny knot of addiction and codependency on the dreamy yet resolutely building “Shape Of An Angel.” Meanwhile, on the back half of the record, the grungey ‘90s sound of “Anesthetic” drives a “love song to the addict,” while “Return To Sender” interrogates the impossibility of controlling others’ perceptions. The album closer is the haunting, seven-minute slow-burner “Whispers In The Fog,” which recalls childhood nightmares and superstitions alongside an expulsion of lifelong anxiety.

Two of the record’s key tracks sit at its midpoint. “Blue Ridge Mtns” is an adaptation of a folk song Harms wrote in high school; disowned at the time for its embarrassing vulnerability, the band give it a new life. Depicting a drive to rehab, fading in and out of consciousness, it’s both an ode to family and a bare look at addiction set to some of the band’s most powerful music. Meanwhile, “All Monsters Go To Heaven” explores two sides of a razor-sharp coin — on the one hand, the hope of salvation for your own moments of monstrosity, and on the other, the dismay of knowing most monsters face no reckoning. “It's both troubling and comforting to imagine heaven isn’t a reward but simply a forgiveness of human cruelty. This song examines both side of that feeling,” Haas says. As the song builds from a murky creep to its cathartic, full-intensity final chorus, MX LONELY’s strengths as a band capable of exorcising these tangled feelings are on full display.

Having built up their touring credentials over the last few years supporting the likes of The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, Trauma Ray, Cryogeyser and Midrift, going forward MX LONELY aim to keep heading out on the road and building a community based on mutual catharsis. They’re also in the process of building a studio which will allow them to both remain in control of their own sound, and invite friends into that community. “This band feels kinda like a family,” Harms says. “I think it’s been a pretty tight family, and as the band grows, we’re hoping to expand that network, and collaborate with people in an easier way.” Though a band committed to introspection, ultimately MX LONELY want to bring others into their world. “I think that’s kind of the manifestation or the prayer in this, is for everyone to be able to have that,” says Haas. “For everyone to have the space and tools to work through their own monsters, and work through each other’s monsters.”

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