Review Summary: Hands on an empty globe, the illusion of place.
The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die have long been a shining example of how to progress throughout a career. With each new release, they’ve turned over a new stone – whether it was the meek, acoustically-driven emo of 2015’s
Harmlessness or the way that 2021’s
Illusory Walls added a proggy, post-hardcore twist that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in Circa Survive’s catalog. The challenge following
Illusory Walls – a grand, sweeping magnum opus – was always going to be how TWIABP could possibly improve on something so emotionally resonating and musically all-encompassing. To try to
outdo it would be a fool’s errand, mired by the impossibility of trying to create something even more conceptual and epic. Returning to their emo roots may have drawn from the well of nostalgia, but it also would have arrived with diminishing returns even for the band’s fiercest loyalists. Instead, TWIABP did what only the most clever and enduring acts seem capable of accomplishing – a wild, unpredictable pivot that doesn’t
need to live up to the band’s crowning achievement because it is its own uniquely worthwhile entity.
Dreams of Being Dust is that moment in TWIABP’s discography, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
For a band that once thrived on lush acoustics and twinkling emo vibes, TWIABP’s fifth outing is unprecedentedly
heavy. Harsh vocals dominate large swaths of the record, almost feeling like a dystopian successor to the still troubled, but more hopeful
Illusory Walls. On ‘Beware the Centrist’, Anthony Gesa and Katie Dvorak can be heard screaming bloody murder with lyrics steeped in despair, and it’s an aesthetic that follows them on equally intense moments such as ‘Se Sufre Pero Se Goza’ or the towering, foreboding closer ‘For Those Who Will Outlive Us’ – which features the most brutally impressive breakdown in TWIABP’s entire career. There’s more than dark vibes and screams, though; ‘Captagon’ leverages an eerie, robotic chant to drive home its chilling vision of machine warfare (“Firing at drones from the roof / The moon turns into a disco ball / And all these dead bodies get up and dance”), while late album gem ‘Dissolving’ produces hands down the most beautiful and memorable melody on the record. The band’s core DNA remains very recognizable throughout
Dreams of Being Dust, despite sounding like nothing TWIABP have ever done before.
Even if a few songs don’t quite leave a lasting impression,
Dreams of Being Dust on the whole does. It’s a micro-version of what some of their emo peers have historically accomplished: Brand New when they shocked fans by moving from indie-rock to grunge/hardcore, or more recently when Foxing transitioned from their poppiest album to one that ruptures ear drums. This isn’t a complete reinvention of TWIABP’s identity so much as it is yet another shedding of skin.
Illusory Walls saw them take on some of their heftiest socio-economic topics across a 70 minute odyssey that neatly tied a bow on it all with the titular refrain, “the world is a beautiful place, but we have to make it that way.”
Dreams of Being Dust is leaner, angrier, and four more years removed from whatever sliver of post-pandemic light once existed. It’s clear the direction they think the world is heading in. Spoiler: it’s the opposite of their namesake.
The tears of the Mother
Give the seeds water
The trees give us crosses
To hang one another
s
