A Look Back on Set to Stun: Set To Stun and The Desperado Undead
Written by Dexter Anthony
Set to Stun is described as sci-fi post-hardcore, but the description misses a lot. Musically, the band manages to switch between metal, post-hardcore, and pop-punk without many missteps. Thematically, they're even more complicated than that.
After an earlier EP, they released their first album, Set to Stun and the Desperado Undead, on Tragic Hero Records in 2015. The album is a concept record in the vein of Boys Night Out's Trainwreck, exploring ideas of interpersonal violence and the mindset of a murderer. On this front, it toes the line of glorifying American Psycho-level violence for the sake of violence, but with a self-awareness that stops short of devolving into some musical equivalent of torture porn for its own sake.
More expansively, though, the album is set in what almost feels like an open-world game, in which higher themes of good versus evil and freedom versus tyranny are addressed song by song to a greater or lesser degree.
SET TO STUN AND THE DESPERADO UNDEAD ALBUM ART
The album begins with the eight-plus minute intro track “Staria I: Amadeus Rise!” Using a mix of styles and vocal effects, it starts the album with a first-person description of a murder and the narrator's misogynistic love-hate perspective on women and relationships. The listener also experiences a contextual story of a larger conflict between the narrator and his society, which at various times the album is presented to be one capable of space travel, ruled by a tyrannical monarchy-style government, and overrun with armies of the undead. From the listener's perspective, it's initially unclear whether these monumental conflicts are reality or delusion. There are hints, from the spoken-word Shining reference, the unhinged rhetorical monologue on the future fate of his daughter, to the conversations the narrator has with the woman he's ostensibly already killed, but the objective reality is purposefully obscured.
The following tracks, “Mirror, Mirror” and “Walk Tall” detail more clearly a society under siege juxtaposed with the narrator's struggle between his homicidal impulses and his desire to be the hero that his community needs. This is followed by exposition from “Blackest Night,” where the city is under attack by a cadre of villains. Implied to be both human and supernatural, the government is corrupt and mostly absent and hiding, where the narrator is leading a rebellion to protect the average citizen from their attackers and deadbeat legislators. This run of songs showcases the array of styles the band uses, from an almost Danger Days-esque pop-punk track to a mix of scene variations to narrative and monologue.
Following these, “Dreamcatchers // Bodysnatchers” revisits the original themes of violence against women and jealousy, making clear that the narrator realizes that at least some of what he describes is only occurring in his mind. It ends with a description of murder set to carnival music just self-aware enough to work, leading into “Doomsday”and its depiction of the narrator as a carnival attraction himself.
Next, “The Necronomicon” and “Alyson Trips” together again emphasize how vast an array of stylistic devices this three-person band manages to employ to get across a range of personalities and perspectives. “The Necronomicon” serves as an example of this, maybe more than any other track. Like other songs on the album, this manages to work well within the context of the overall concept instead of seeming disjointed or confused. This leads to the acoustic track “Alyson Trips,” which draws an image of the narrator as a tired leader of his rebellion between fights.
The album's ending three tracks serve to both close out the current chapter of the story while allowing for another. “Dead or Alive” returns to themes of compulsive violence, while “Brightest Day” possesses a title subverted by its description of the death of the narrator's daughter. The final song, “Staria II: Desperado Undead,” is a fitting end to the story thus far: the antihero rebellion fighter, fighting the good fight while simultaneously the absolute definition of a flawed hero, unable to control his own compulsions. And it serves as much as a conclusion to this part as an introduction to the next.
Which, after five years, appears to be imminent. After releasing the single “Walk Tall II” in 2018, the band announced in July 2020 that they finished recording their second release. Tentatively slated to drop later this year, which seems… unlikely at best, the upcoming album continues the story where it left off five years ago. So at least one good thing is coming out of this 2020.