Dystopian fiction has dominated screens and pages for a while now but a Nashville-based artist may have just crafted the first dystopian emo album. In some ways it sounds like what if the band Pinegrove made a soundtrack for a Hollywood doomsday epic with big choruses and a deeply personal backstory. Ok, maybe that’s a little reductionist, but it approaches some of the underlying sounds and themes presented on The Soft Apocalypse, the debut album by Henry J. Star. That’s the artist name of Devin J. Badgett, originally from Knoxville, who says this truly is a concept album about the end of the world told through the lens of three characters. On the record with WNXP, Devin shared the stories behind the songs, the intense process of bringing this album to life and how he faces hard truths through music. Â
