A strange realization: the word “dystopian” no longer feels futuristic. Apocalyptic weather, the unpredictability of artificial intelligence, the convenience of attack drones, erratic driverless cars, the end-of-the-world escape schemes of technocratic oligarchs, Orwellian doublespeak, government agents disappearing citizens off the streets — all of that shit is already here, sizzling out of your newsfeed every day like ooze from a knocked-over barrel of toxic waste. If dystopia is now, then I guess that makes the music of post-punk bands like All Clean and Stress Palace sound positively contemporary. They both make heavy, abrasive, ominous music that is both grimy and oppressive in atmosphere, their lyrical themes limned in the blacklight aura flickering where one’s wits end. On Saturday night at the Double Wide in Dallas, the two bands will release a vinyl 7” split featuring their newest singles, pressed and distributed by Kansas City, Missouri-based indie label The Ghost Is Clear. Between All Clean, Stress Palace, and the opening band, long-running Dallas-based doomgazers The Angelus, the vibe at the show will be appropriately gloomy and loud, the kind of auditory pummeling that offers moments of catharsis for times like these.
All Clean formed in 2018 as the solo project of Fort Worth multi-instrumentalist Zachary Edwards (Ice Eater, Oil Boom, Son of Stan), initially as a series of loops and beats tapped out on his phone’s GarageBand app that quickly mutated into a terrifying, angst-and-anxiety-ridden engine of post-industrial doom. Once he hammered and grafted his ideas into coherent arrangements, he worked the songs out with a live band, currently crewed by himself on guitars and vocals, guitarist and synth player Charli Mireles, bassist Miguel Santana, and drummer Ivan Beltran. Though the 2020 pandemic and general life events slowed All Clean’s launch, he eventually took his material to producer Alex Bhore (This Will Destroy You, The Angelus, Pearl Earl) at Elmwood Studio in Dallas, and the band released a debut album, Down from the Inner Work, in 2023. That album’s gritty, robot-psychosis sonics and the relentless propulsion of its rhythm section create an atmosphere of grimy paranoia, as Edwards’ lyrics tear at old wounds and new fears.
The band’s new single, “This Is a Deathwatch,” triples down on their debut’s computerized dread. Trapped in a junkyard warren of distorted, jagged guitars, mechanically precise percussion, and the ever-present throb of bass and synthesizer worming into your brain, Edwards’ baroque, baritone vocals sound like he’s on the brink of a breakdown, straining and frustrated beneath the crush of the inevitable collapse of society.
“It’s a commentary on the American decline and its slide into authoritarianism as we all just passively watch,” Edwards told me.
The lyrics are as cynical as they are grim. “Not right now,” he bellows in a verse. “I think I’ll deal with it later / Let’s put it off / Someone’s gonna come along / And probably make it better / Won’t get better / No it never gets better / Sit and watch while the world burns / And I’ll probably write a letter to myself.”
In “Deathwatch,” nobody is coming to fix it, and nobody can be bothered to care.
The split’s other single, “See You in Hell” by Dallas-based noise-rockers Stress Palace, is also just as jaded. Like All Clean, Stress Palace began in 2018, when a group of Dallas musicians — singer Michael Stoner, guitarist Sam Lomax, bassist JT Ward, and drummer Matt Gillispie, themselves veterans of post- and noise-rock bands such as Blitzer, Things of Earth, the West Windows, and Death Stairs — started working on material for a new group. The pandemic sidelined their live-show plans, and later drummer Gillespie had to bow out for personal reasons. A friend named Brandon Butters replaced him, and in 2023, Stress Palace also recorded their debut with Bhore at Elmwood. The self-titled album is a suite of proggy arrangements and ominous guitar figures that rush Stoner’s incendiary vocals ever forward, like a raft hurtling down a river flowing out of hell.
While the band was no stranger to atypical measures and the aural textures that come from tuning-and-pedal experimentation, the studio experience opened up their sound to other ideas beyond “guitars,” so they added another comrade-in-amps, guitarist Marshall Read, on synths. Recorded with Michael Smith at Sunland Sound in East Dallas, “See You in Hell” is Stress Palace’s first recording with this lineup. The track’s sludgy, sci-fi dread kind of sounds like what would happen if Fugazi were bathed in LSD and made to play near a slow-motion sinkhole in a city suffering real-time collapse. Stoner sounds as if he’s tried and given up on being nice, and his words pop off like the ferocious rant of a madman raving in the midst of a heatwave: “I’m truly suffering, and you know it / Can’t wake up from the nightmare / I’m in hell, and I’m burning up / And I always see you there / Stuck in Dallas forever / Until the wet, hot end / This is not where anybody / Wants to be in five years / I’ll see you in hell.”
The Ghost Is Clear, a small indie label specializing in punk, hardcore, and noise rock, has a dedicated fanbase — the subReddit about the label is fun to read for the fans’ enthusiasm — so the idea that this release will expose both All Clean and Stress Palace to wider audiences outside North Texas is not farfetched, nor is the idea that music like this will resonate with anyone living in these times. For me, these songs, for all their rage and discontent, are oddly comforting. It is very wearisome to feel helpless and angry every day as the world’s superseding forces continue to stack the deck in their favor at the expense of everyone else. And when you think about it, Dallas — and pretty much every other big city for that matter — is not so enjoyable to exist in anymore, and that also feels pretty dystopian. Hearing music like this makes me feel better, like at least I’m not the only one seeing everything catch on fire.
All Clean/Stress Palace 7” Split Release Party
9pm Sat w/The Angelus at Double Wide, 3510 Commerce St, Dallas.
$10-20. 469-872-0191.
