If Backxwash created lore accurate ‘be not afraid’ angels with her previous works, Only Dust Remains softens their form ever so slightly even as it still commits deeply and introspectively to tough themes and darkly candid attitudes
Release date: March 28, 2025 | Ugly Hag/Independent | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp
Fair warning, this review and the music it covers talks very frankly about death, suicide, and all its rippling emotions and feelings throughout. Please use discretion when reading this article, though maybe it’ll help you process and not feel so alone if you deal with those things too.
I’d find it hard to believe if someone I knew told me they didn’t deal with intrusive and/or suicidal thoughts at some point in their life, or at least thought about their own death in a detailed manner. I think to a degree it’s normal, even without depression or associated neurodivergence. I know I often do, though thankfully without strong intention, throughout my life. It’s not something I’m very forthcoming with because, to me, it’s not that serious. I’ve never attempted suicide or come close, I’ve never chosen a date to try it, but I have imagined it like how I could do it or what would probably happen if I did it when I was at various low points. That’s typically where the sobering feeling washes over you and the reason why there’s those memes that talk about why someone wants to die, but also why not and those usually end with a dark-but-true admission of ‘mom would be sad‘. Yeah.
Years ago, I had a friend online tell me they were going to kill themself – the how, the why, the when – confiding in me (and others) about this and, while I obviously did my part in urging them from doing so, I also had to be empathetic and go ‘yeah, I get it’ because I did in a much lesser way with what I was going through myself at the time. I genuinely do understand why people would earnestly want to kill themselves and I believe ONLY telling someone who is suicidal that they shouldn’t because it’s cowardly or because others depend on them can do more harm than good and comes off as shaming even if true. Still, I’m sure I could have handled it better as a friend. I’m happy to say that after they attempted, they lived, got help, and are now the happiest they’ve ever been and have been for years. That, in a nutshell small enough to be reductive, is how it feels to listen to Only Dust Remains.
This is new ground for Backxwash – well, kinda. Her last three albums were an intended trilogy greatly inspired by her own life; light on approachability, heavy on the religious allegory and references, heavy on the pain. Pain fueled by family, adolescent experience, of living in a world that looks down upon her existence as a Black trans woman descended from Zambian immigrants. It was the kind of shit that was only matched in sonic weight and themes by Lingua Ignota. Songs tended to be violent in sound and lyrics, a strong focus on steely cold industrial influence for the production (all of which largely produced by Backxwash herself). After that tough and cathartic breakdown and build-up, you could say Only Dust Remains is a summary clocking of her artistic place currently – only dust remained. After all, what is there to do after all that’s been done? A lot apparently.
The pain doesn’t stop, the thoughts don’t quit, and there’s always something to reckon with. Anyone that saw themself in the first few paragraphs will feel that. And there’s a reason why Only Dust Remains starts with a song named “Black Lazarus”, breathing new life into Backxwash‘s blunt-force rap just as it does the form of the person this album revolves around. Sampling a Brazilian folk song by artist Zeferina (all samples are listed in Only Dust Remains‘ liner notes so I assume it’s fine to mention this – no sample snitching!), the track touches on the concerns of friends, agency of suicide, and the thought of being found dead punctuated by a captivating line comparing the rigor mortis of the hands as ‘twisted fingers like I’m thugged out‘. It also calls to mind a perceived hypocrisy many feel while complaining about our life living in a first-world country while others are being bombed to hell and back with entire generations dead in minutes – ‘Why the fuck am I complaining here/When there’s kids in Gaza with a missing father/The bongos in Congo don’t hit as hard/South Sudan needs a plan, man don’t get me started‘ (definitely worth noting the focus of Palestine’s particular struggle against unparalleled imperialist dehumanization and genocide on the backhalf of “History of Violence”).
Backxwash embodies a mind embattled with the micro and macro of life, darkness and clarity switching places at a moment’s notice. This is done with even more relatability on the single “Wake Up” which is easily one of my favorite songs of the year (despite it coming out last year). The production has these warm synths that remind me of “Subdivisions” by Rush with the similar tone and progression, but keeps the clashing drums to still give it a light industrial flavor. The lyrics deal with feeling forsaken (forsook?), hopeless, and ugly, and yet there’s still a spark of desire to live, thinking ‘maybe a glimmer of hope will slip me a note‘, but there’s a few lines before that truly speak to me and will so many others: ‘I might do it but not today, see/There’s a game coming out/That I really wanna fuckin’ play‘. It’s a feeling that’s so relatable that when I’m at my worst, even without the suicide ideation, I always try to look forward to what new album from a favorite band or game is coming out that I have to live to experience. Makes me wonder what her current ‘killing myself postponed‘ game is – mine’s probably Ninja Gaiden 4 or the wonderful-looking indie ABYSS X ZERO (which Backxwash might also be into as a fellow ’90s kid).
Only Dust Remains refuses to feel defeated after all. There’s a lot of ethereal moments on this LP where Backxwash revels in the moments where life is worth living or at least made bearable. The sound of “DISSOCIATION” feels like a sunset painting your skin with its rays, a day ending with tinges of melancholy, it’s still passing with more semblance of hope and control as the guest Chloe Hotline‘s washed-out vocals sing at the end. It’s one of the brightest songs Backxwash has produced yet, hopefully a sign of things to come in terms of a wider range when it comes to atmosphere and mood. “Stairway to Heaven” is beautiful in how it interprets death – the dressing up of a body, the scattering of ashes in nature, the sprouting of trees fertilized from it – a best case scenario for those we leave behind to move beyond that transitions so well into the following “Love After Death” interlude before the final song, the title track.
“Only Dust Remains” is appropriately the most serene moment on the album, like a final release into bliss, like this is the soundtrack of the waiting room into heaven and Backxwash is rapping over it down to her loved ones from cloudtop. It’s all about love and the complexities of life, the moments we regret and the ones we don’t (‘They’re quick to judge how I’m too brazen and ignorant/So middle finger to these racists and idiots‘). The topper of the song is the celestial choirs at the end which are gospel in nature and feel emotionally transcendent. It reminds me a bit of Bones Thugs-N-Harmony‘s “Meet Me in the Sky” and how hip-hop’s most melodic quintet imagined themselves as angels presiding over earth’s turmoil. It’s unclear how much of this music is supposed to be separated from Backxwash herself, but it’s hard to imagine there not being profound overlap with these songs, their themes, and her own life. In that sense, maybe she made Only Dust Remains as a way to imagine her own battle with death, its causes, and repercussions, the culmination of it all an obvious positive mark as she’s still alive to see the release of this great work and receive overwhelming acclaim for it.
I hope my interpretation and distillation of this album hasn’t been too flippant or casual to the point of irreverence, especially when it comes to the artist’s own intentions. Only Dust Remains deserves respect above all – it’s a biting exploration of these topics that aren’t matched by much else out there. I think of Danny Brown‘s “30” that closes out his (initially released) album XXX and how it so viscerally raps about overdosing, or in that LP’s title track and how he talks about his own suicide ideation (‘And it’s the downward spiral/Got me suicidal/But too scared to do it/So these pills’ll be the rifle‘) around anxious thoughts of failure, poverty, and prison, and how each track is a bookend for hardcore sex and partying (though not an outright promotion of those things). Similarly, Backxwash provides her own take on the eternal ‘we’re so back/it’s so over’ cycle of life and how it specifically manifests in its extremes. It’s honest as hell and, by virtue of that, beautiful.
This is probably the most I’ve personally felt from a rap album since McKinley Dixon‘s last one or maybe Saba‘s Few Good Things. Here’s an album that not only directly addresses a lot of specific demons, but also indulges them, traveling to that dark side where all you can envision is that gun in your mouth or your limp body splattered against the pavement after a plummet. If you know, you know, and it should be obvious by listening to Backxwash that this isn’t something glorified or taken lightly – her music has dealt with acute, personal pain all over the spectrum of time and severity, but always seriously. Now, Only Dust Remains gives it new context and a fresher coat of production where it feels like we genuinely got a new side of her. The raps are always pointed and varied, and if you’ve been through enough in your life, there’s something of yourself to see in her and her work. The most important part is that we’re all still here to make those connections and help each other through them.
