The Drums’ Jonny Pierce launches Abysmal Records with Mareux collaboration “It Didn’t Matter”
Jonny Pierce has announced a new label, Abysmal Records, and shared its debut single, a collaborative track between his project The Drums and Iranian American darkwave artist Mareux. The song, “It Didn’t Matter”, is the first in a planned six-month series of singles drawn from recording sessions Pierce has hosted over the past two years with different artists.
Pierce described the partnership with Mareux as unusually fluid. “Not since writing my earliest music has a song come together so effortlessly,” he said. “Whenever that happens, it makes me feel certain the song was meant to exist - that it needed to be here, for all of us. Mareux’s synthesizer wizardry threw me back to my teenage years, when almost everything I listened to was synthesizer-based music, especially synth-pop.”
The Drums' 2024 album Jonny dealt explicitly with difficult personal history. “It Didn’t Matter” filters similarly raw subject matter through sleek, cold-wave production that keeps the song moving forward even as its lyrics circle confusion and regret. Mareux’s presence as co-author pushes the track into a more atmospheric register, aligning with his own reputation for reviving post-punk and gothic sounds for a younger online audience.
Abysmal Records, Pierce says, has been conceived as a home for collaboration and experimentation, with a handpicked roster of emerging artists. The series of singles that “It Didn’t Matter” launches will lead into a new full-length album from The Drums expected in 2027.
Pierce’s choice to structure the label around collaborative singles, rather than a traditional album cycle, mirrors a broader shift among artists seeking to stay nimble and responsive. It also draws a line from his earlier work to a more present-tense approach: The Drums’ breakthrough single “Money” recently found a second life via TikTok, going platinum and introducing the band to a Gen Z audience.
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