Album Review: MX LONELY - All Monsters

For those entrenched in the New York underground, Brooklyn’s MX LONELY has never been a "new" band, but with All Monsters, they have made a significant leap forward—this is the kind of record that could finally see them break through to a much wider audience.

The trio—Rae Haas, Jake Harms, and Gabriel Garman—has spent years refining a sound that sits at the volatile intersection of grunge, shoegaze, alt rock and post-punk. On All Monsters, that volatility is channeled into a professional, expansive production that feels less like a beginning and more like a hard-won victory.

The record is anchored by a deep-seated sense of history, born from the band’s shared experiences in recovery and the navigation of neurodivergence. Haas and Harms famously met in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, a detail that colors every jagged riff and dissociative synth line. Recorded entirely to analog tape by the band's bassist and engineer, Gabriel Garman, the album has a physical, "live-in-the-room" presence that feels increasingly rare in an era of sanitized, digital-perfect indie rock. You can hear the floorboards creak and the amplifiers hum, creating a texture that favors raw humanity over studio sheen.

The album opens with "Kill The Candle," setting the emotional temperature with imagery of "a tree with its roots upside down." It is an apt metaphor for the band’s approach: taking the familiar structures of alt-rock and inverting them until they feel alien. However, the record’s true center of gravity lies in the single "Big Hips." 

Over a seasick, angular guitar churn, Haas delivers a deadpan reclamation of trans adolescence. Transforming the onset of feminine curves into a "big dick joke," the track navigates the claustrophobia of gender dysphoria with a rare mix of biting humor and profound sadness. It is a mantra of defiance, a "self-mocking celebration" that refuses to romanticize the trauma it explores.

Throughout the eight tracks, the "monsters" of the title manifest in various forms, moving from the chemical to the moral. On "Shape Of An Angel," the band confronts the "chemical monster" of stimulant addiction as Haas belts, "I'm in love with Adderall and validation," a confession that hits with the force of a sudden comedown. Elsewhere, "Blue Ridge Mtns" captures the "familial monster," building a patient, heavy tension that mimics a panic attack in the backseat of a car headed to rehab. Yet, for all its exploration of the "purgatory of anxiety," the album is not a tragedy. The title track, "All Monsters Go To Heaven," serves as the record's philosophical spine. Over a massive, grunge-inflected chorus, it posits a terrifying but comforting nuance: that even the worst parts of ourselves—born of addiction, shame, and BPD—are worthy of a weird kind of peace. It suggests that the only way to break cycles of pain is to release those internal demons into the ether rather than meeting them with rage.

The record culminates with "Whispers in the Fog," a seven-minute slow burn that serves as a final release. As the track erupts into a wall of noise before fading into tape hiss, it becomes clear that MX LONELY has performed a rare trick. They have created a document of survival that is as massive as the demons it tries to outrun. All Monsters is a vital, unpretentious manifesto celebrating the neurodivergent and the outsider. It’s a collection of songs that feels tailor-made for the stage, where the sheer volume can turn these personal reflections into a shared experience.