Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci wrote in his Prison Notebooks, “'The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Ugly Euphoria sounds a lot like that process.

The core duo of Maranata, Jon Wesseltoft and Dag Stiberg, have been at it for 20 years, now. Here, saxophonist Martín Escalanate contributes his own shrieks and tears to the mix. The result is 55 minutes of ecstatic ear-drum assault. Wesseltoft lays a tumultuous foundation and Stiberg and Escalanate use their various saxes to jackhammer it, over and over again. I am not sure how the trio keeps up the high level of energy or invention. (The plug on Bandcamp says “coca leaves, bad beer, and too much coffee,” and I would believe that.) Despite the monolithic reputation of excruciating music such as this, no two minutes sound the same, even as everything resides in the similar aesthetic terrain.

In such destruction comes creation. The new forms that arise carry the genes of their dismembered predecessors. Here, one can hear shards of melody or rhythm that periodically fight through the tempest of circuitry and electronic gusts. Wesseltoft shows a predilection for heavily amplified radio static strewn with fragments of contorted broadcasts struggling to reach clarity. (The photo of burnt-out sound equipment on the inside cover point to this, as well.) Stiberg and Escalanate’s bellows are no less relentless. Regarding the interactions: despite the earlier jackhammer analogy, I am not really sure whether Stiberg and Escalanate are bombarding Wesseltoft’s wall of noise, or violently entangling with it. Sometimes, it even sounds as if Wesseltoft is capturing and twisting their lines into his tempest of sirens and heavy rumble.

Ugly Euphoria is an exhausting listen. This listener welcomed the infrequent moments when the onslaught thinned, my ears could rest, and I could marvel at just how intense this all is. Fifty-five minutes of sheer and unapologetic aural assault. Indeed, Ugly Euphoria is a monster, a damaged and unstable product of damaged and unstable times. In the original sense of the term, it is also portentous, pointing to what could possibly but cannot yet be. And, it is not pretty. But that’s the point.