Matt Wolejsza’s debut album The Beast I’m Meant to Be comes swinging with bruised honesty, thick guitar riffs, and the emotional heaviness that sticks to your ribs. Built from years of songwriting, feedback sessions, and collaboration within Baltimore’s music community, the Gaithersburg-based artist channels personal demons and social frustration into a record that feels unapologetically raw. There’s a clear debt owed to Metallica in the crunching guitar work and pounding momentum, yet Wolejsza isn’t simply playing dress-up in metal nostalgia. He uses those influences as a launchpad for something more personal, more wounded, and occasionally surprisingly tender.
“Stupidity Gone Viral” kicks the door open with revving guitars and hammering drums that hit like a fist on a dashboard. Wolejsza sings with tense frustration about internet culture spiraling into chaos, where stupidity spreads faster than truth and reality itself feels endangered. The reckless heaviness works in the song’s favor; it sounds like someone doomscrolling themselves into madness and finally deciding to scream back at the machine. There’s anger here, but also exhaustion underneath the noise.
Then comes the title track, “The Beast I’m Meant to Be,” and things get even darker. Grinding guitars twist against thunderous drums while Wolejsza tears into themes of depression, alienation, and self-hatred with almost uncomfortable honesty. He paints himself as a “loser, outcast, monster,” repeating the crushing line that he could never become anything other than the beast he was made to be. The track doesn’t offer easy redemption or motivational clichés. Instead, it drags listeners directly into the ugly trenches of diminished self-worth and leaves them sitting there in the rubble.
Later, “The Door That Won’t Open” slows the pace into something moodier and more reflective. Thick gritty guitars loom behind weary vocals that sound dazed and emotionally drained, like someone pacing circles through sleepless nights searching for answers that never arrive. Elsewhere, songs like “One More Hug,” written about the loss of his cat Bonnie, reveal another side of Wolejsza entirely — vulnerable, grieving, and deeply human.
For a debut, The Beast I’m Meant to Be packs a serious punch. It’s messy in places, sure, but that roughness is exactly what gives the album its pulse.
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Review by: Naomi Joan