Carpe Diem, Moonman is one of the most relentlessly fun records of the year. A hyperkinetic funk-metal thrill ride, combining lightning-fast arpeggios with airtight grooves and a sense of joyful mayhem that’s cartoonish in the best way.

You could call it Red Hot Chili Peppers on hyperdrive with none of the balladry, all of the bounce. Opening with an irresistible one-two punch, Another Reincarnation and March On for Pax Ramona blow the doors off with riffs that dazzle in under a second. The musicianship here is insane, channeling the harmonic logic of classical composition - Bach or Mozart filtered through fuzz pedals - using shifting arpeggios and polyrhythmic patterns that hit your brain before you have time to consciously follow them. Riffs shift just one note at a time to signal harmonic movement, whilst melodies loop and evolve like mathematical patterns, which might make Carpe Diem, Moonman sound academic or fussy, when really it’s the opposite.

It’s dazzlingly impressive, but it’s also absurdly fun. This isn’t virtuosity for it’s own sake, but crowd-moving, head-nodding, chaos-inciting joy, built for bouncing. It’s joyful, immediate, and silly in the best way - a masterclass in musicianship that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The songs rarely spill over four minutes, and never lose their groove. The more languid moments don’t dial down the musicianship, they just redirect it, with tracks like As The Hummingbird Hovers shifting the focus toward mood and feel, letting texture take centre stage. Nowhere is this more perfectly realised than on the closing track Concrete and Cola, which drifts into a hypnotic call-and-response between guitar and vocals, underpinned by a soft, friendly groove and an achingly warm chord sequence inviting you to close your eyes and sway. The fast stuff dazzles, and the slow stuff glows, all bristling with compositional invention.

One of the album’s most infectious qualities is its palpable energy, exuding the raw, unfiltered excitement of a live performance. The tracks capture the essence of a band revelling in their craft, inviting listeners to join the celebration, with a vivacious spirit that feels tailor-made for sun-drenched festival fields, where audiences can jump to the high-octane tracks or lie back and soak in the psychedelic moments. Out The Universe Pours encapsulates the band’s ability to fuse blistering technicality with sun-drenched bliss, with a groove that’s pure beach-bum serenity, but layered with a guitar riff of astonishing speed. That these two extremes can coexist so naturally is a testament to the band’s compositional confidence, and very few bands could make music this intricate feel simultaneously easy, breezy, and fun.

Carpe Diem, Moonman is a record as tightly wound and riff-stacked as a prog-metal showcase, but as bouncy, silly, and groove-led as the ‘90s funk revival. The twitchy precision of early Battles or Don Caballero laced with the psychedelic fuzz of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. The musicianship recalls guitar greats like Megadeth but it’s jammy, joyous, and wonderfully unpretentious. A technicolour rollercoaster of summer riffs and total absurdity.