Going in blind into Makhluk Aseng’s Dosa feels like stepping into a battered time machine — one that doesn’t hurl you into the distant past, but drops you just close enough to the present that it’s not even worth figuring out how much time you lost sweating over its controls. It sounds familiar because you’ve already heard it a thousand times elsewhere. And yet, there’s something about that familiarity that pulls you in. Familiarity is good, right? It should be. The track checks all the boxes for a potential grunge hit: guitars that teeter between gentle, eyes-closed head-bobbing and full-body, sweat-soaked catharsis; vocals that start weary before slowly building into rage; and lyrics from a man whose promises falter on the cliffs of broken ones. But its promise is also its burden — echoing the ghosts of indie bands that once teetered on the edge of greatness, only to dissolve into mere potential. Let’s hope Makhluk Aseng doesn’t share the same fate.

Stream “Dosa” on Bandcamp: