Dreams of Being Dust

The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die return with Dreams of Being Dust, an album that finds the Connecticut-formed collective plumbing the depths of emotional ruin and emerging with their most scorched, unrelenting work yet. Co-produced by guitarist Chris Teti (Fiddlehead, Anxious) and Greg Thomas (END, Misery Signals), the album exchanges the band’s usual sprawl for something more serrated–folding djent-like heft and post-hardcore volatility into their post-everything DNA. Dreams of Being Dust is the band’s fIfth studio album, and follows up their well-received 2021 album, Illusory Walls, which arrived as their “heaviest, proggiest, most audacious release to date” according to Stereogum. Tack ling complex social and political themes like religion and capitalism, Pitchfork praised its scathing indictments as “fuming with resentment for the ruthless greed and self- interest fueling societal collapse. If Illusory Walls was their grand reckoning, Dreams Of Being Dust is the aftermath: raw, furious, alive. But even amid the chaos, the band’s core remains intact– a belief in community, resistance, and making sense of the world through sheer volume and vulnerability. TWIABP have always blurred the lines between hope and despair, and here, that duality feels sharper than ever. Now a decade in, the band– David F. Bello (vocals), Chris Teti (guitar/ vocals), Joshua Cyr (bass), Katie Dvorak (synth/vocals), Steven K. Buttery (drums), and Anthony Gesa (guitar/ vocals)–deliver a message that sounds less like a eulogy and more like a rallying cry.