There is a helplessness that hums beneath the skin, a dull drumbeat no distance can mute. War, whether waged across oceans or in your neighbor’s yard, rips through bone and breath alike, leaving neither victors nor vanished untouched. Men pulled like marionettes by machinery beyond their making; mothers mourning sons before the telegram arrives; children clutching at a world cracked and collapsing. The maps may change, the banners may shift, but the ache remains: ordinary lives splintered by forces vast and void of mercy. No soil is sacred, no soul spared. War seeps in, seeps deep, and no one walks away whole.
Clean Beast, the solo project of Melbourne artist Ash K, tackles this horror with their unrelenting new single through Wild At Heart, Tragedy.
Clean Beast took shape in the wake of a turbulent chapter in Ash’s life, when a music therapist urged him to channel his recent struggles into song. Raised in a family of artists and creatives, Ash admits that, despite life’s upheavals, music has remained a steady, driving force…a thread pulling him through setbacks and shaping his path forward. However, after returning home and decompressing, something changed. He started writing, and the words started flowing.
Tragedy knows no mercy, no measured step, as it barrels forth, bare-knuckled and breathless. Drums drive like a relentless rain, guitars slice clean as shattered glass, synths shriek and swell, bass beats like a pulse gone mad. Ash’s voice, sharp-edged and serrated, rides it all, calling to mind the brute machinery of Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode’s sweetest bite.
Clean Beast stitches together a sprawl of sounds: post-punk’s geometric scowl, rave’s reckless rush, Berlin school’s mechanical murmur—into something sinewy and singular. Loss laced with movement, grief draped in groove, sorrow sent spinning beneath strobes. Influences flicker: Editors’ elegance, Gary Numan’s neon dread, New Order’s cool clarity. Yet what bursts forth is poetry for the dance floor, a wild, wounded waltz.
“Musically it’s as close to punk as I get; no frills, no solos, no fade-outs. It bursts into your consciousness, get the job done, and leaves,” Ash says.
At its core, the track grapples with the crushing helplessness felt in the face of global conflict and the deep scars war leaves on everyone it touches. For Ash, who lives with complex PTSD, autism, depression, and anxiety, the song is deeply personal. He hopes it serves as a lifeline, offering connection and validation to others who carry the weight of trauma and unrest.
“What war doesn’t kill, it breaks forever,” he says. “You are seen and heard. It might not be much, but it’s what I have to offer…Things happen, they don’t make sense, we suffer; I understand.”
Wild At Heart is a record label that works with artists who experience injustice and exclusion through visible and invisible disability. They support the creation of original music which challenges artistic expectations, leading change for access and equity in music culture, industry, and society.
Catch Clean Beast on Monday, March 24th, at Social Sanctuary, Northcote Social Club.
Get tickets here.
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