Review Summary: wake the fuck up
Only Dust Remains sees Ashanti Mutinta aka Backxwash waking up - from the suffocating density of her trilogy, and from the mindset that created it. That trilogy, starting in 2020 with
God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It, was defined by trauma, spirituality, and heritage, but more specifically by a fight to survive through noise and distortion. The production matched that desperation: horrorcore synths, industrial chaos, and metallic riffs didn’t just accompany her words - they amplified the agony behind them.
Only Dust Remains is no less emotionally intense, but it reframes that intensity through a metamorphosed sound - hip hop beats instead of blast beats, ambient textures in place of harsh feedback, making for a more dynamic and spacious soundscape. That space lets Mutinta sharpen her delivery, and she fills it with more melody and more presence. That transformation runs however deeper than just production – it’s a spiritual shift. By stripping back the chaos, Backxwash brings her message into sharper focus. And it’s in this clarity that the album finds some of its most powerful moments. On "Dissociation", the track builds patiently – all tension and restraint – until a guitar enters like a divine rupture, turning the song’s final stretch into a solemn, almost liturgical climax. Elsewhere, "History of Violence" features warbled synths swirling beneath her voice like a psychic current. The emotional weight is already overwhelming - her verses are laced with depression and historical trauma - but those synths make the song seismic; sound and statement, rising together.
That same sense of reframing extends to the album’s imagery. In contrast to the screaming banshee figure of
I Lie Here Buried With My Rings And My Dresses, the cover of
Only Dust Remains presents a calmer vision – Backxwash sitting still, hands in her lap, draped in a white garment that evokes both peace and ritual. It reads not as submission, but as poise – a quiet resolve that speaks to transformation. She hasn’t escaped the pain, but she’s facing it differently now – not in flames, but in clarity.
Clarity, however, doesn’t mean detachment. This record still burns – not just from within, but outward. It makes space not only for personal anguish but for the injustices shaping the world around her. References of the ongoing genocide in Palestine do not "simply" act as abstract solidarity, but as a visceral reality entangled with Backxwash's own lived history. Underpinning the entire album is a struggle between the personal and the global, between generational pain and the endless churn of violence. "Wake Up" thus becomes a desperate crescendo, a collapse, and a command: a scream that refuses to be swallowed.
Only Dust Remains is Backxwash’s way of waking up from the past - by turning it into something transgressive, furious, and honest. It’s also a message to us. To look around. To feel again.
To wake the fuck up.
