The Men
Buyer Beware
FUZZ CLUB
The Men are still on a tear in 2025. Buyer Beware is the New York rock quartet’s tenth proper album and fourth release since celebrating the decade anniversary of their breakout release New Moon two years ago. 2023’s New York City LP and the live release Fuzz Club Sessions No. 20, along with 2024’s demo collection Manhattan Fire, kept the lights on, and Buyer Beware dials up the noise while maintaining their minimalist punk spirit from the earliest days.
“The world is ending / Grab a seat / Enjoy the ride,” the band screams on the ferocious opener “Pony,” embellished with its VHS-quality acid trip music video. They don’t waste time finding a breakneck groove, dominating each stage of their career they find themselves revisiting. Buyer Beware runs like a mad merry-go-round of rock genre offshoots—choose your horse, giraffe, or ostrich and strap in for three minutes maximum per track.
The record marks the fifth collaboration with recording engineer Travis Harrison at Serious Business Studio. They still record directly to tape for that raw-nerve energy they’ve been tapping into in rock clubs over the past 17 years. Although it doesn’t quite hit the punk zeniths of New Moon and Open Your Heart, its lo-fi quality harkens back to precursor albums Leave Home and debut Immaculada. “At the Movies” has a jangly noise-rock shuffle that smacks of early Hives recordings, while “Tombstone” sees the quartet get even more apocalyptic (“The world’s on fire, what did you expect?”). Most of Buyer Beware is a bit obfuscated by end-times, fire-and-brimstone rock. On doom-metal-inspired dirge “The Path” and cacophonous finale “Get My Soul,” they get triumphant even against the earthly chaos around them.
Teetering on being one-note with its themes, Buyer Beware’s title track is an autobiographical romp describing an artist’s deal with a demon and the ceaseless pursuit to get inspired in uninspiring times. The Men are defiant: “The muse got a lot to say / I like it that way […] It’s her I serve / As I hang on my last nerve / You got to roll / You got to writhe / To miss the swing / Of the scythe.” OK, maybe Buyer Beware never truly hops out of its end-of-the-world thematic groove. That’s totally fine for The Men as they gallop toward two decades together. Call them the Four Horsemen of the Punk Apocalypse—they’re given authority over a quarter of the rock realm, to kill with bass, guitars, and drums, and by means of the beats of the Earth.
