On every Omit All release until now, Dave Klyman handled production himself. For “Lights Up on The End Stage,” the new three-song EP out today, he let go.
The Philadelphia four-piece booked sessions at Retro City Studios with co-owner and head engineer Joe Boldizar, with whom Klyman started his music audio career as an intern years ago.
Omit All formed in 2023, but the four people in the band have been active in Philly’s music scene for over twenty years. Since starting up, they’ve shared bills with Shai Hulud, This Day Forward, Oxbow, and Go Ahead and Die, and released two full EPs plus a handful of singles.
“Lights Up on The End Stage” is the band’s third EP and the follow-up to “The Big Cull.”
The three tracks sit across a range that runs from Powerman 5000’s industrial swing to Harms Way’s metallic-hardcore weight. Bassist Mike Fennen handles all of the band’s artwork and flyers, and designed this cover as a translation of what the band calls the music’s “gritty, blown-out character,” pulling imagery directly from the title: glaring lights, distorted fuzz, and the quiet that fills the gaps.
Klyman, who plays guitars and sings, has done all the recording, mixing, and mastering on previous Omit All releases, working to specific parameters he’d set for each project. This time, he stepped out of the producer chair. “It felt odd but nice to step out of the producer role and be just a musician again,” he says. “As a result, Joe did things I wouldn’t have. He brought a level of intensity that I didn’t fully know we had. He pushed farther into places I wouldn’t necessarily have thought we’d sound good. Proved me wrong!” Klyman calls the finished EP “a somehow familiar departure.”
A line connects Klyman’s lyrical approach across the past two Omit All releases. “The Big Cull” and “Lights Up on The End Stage” both point at finality, and Klyman resists reading too much into that. He calls his lyrical style “more of a straight line than an arc,” not really an evolution but the same basic thoughts he’s been having for a long time.
He prefers to think of both EPs as cautionary rather than final, “an exploration of the flaws in ourselves, both inherent and learned. Musings on where things are, not necessarily where they are doomed to head.”
When less hope is around, things can feel inevitable. The result, in his words, is “a dichotomy of bitter hope and hollow detachment.” Subtlety isn’t the goal: “Omit All is not particularly subtle in the lyrical department, and no one is going to mistake me for a motivational speaker in this context.”
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“Glom”
The opening track isn’t about generative AI itself, Klyman explains, but about the people behind the screen. “Those that might think highly of themselves while having their service of choice scrape, rake, and take something for them to share as their own work.” The tech’s proliferation matters to him less than the self-aggrandizement and isolation it produces, the way it replaces hands and imagination, replaces what friends, family, and professionals would have previously fulfilled. He calls it “the outsourcing of your own mind.”
“Subscription Only”
The thread continues. “Subscription Only” takes the same drift and pushes it into how social media has come to stand in for physical interaction. Klyman points at “the complacency of never having to leave your comforts, sinking into hero syndrome and parasocial constructs,” and at the apparatus behind it: a business already claiming billions, built to mine data and wallets. “It doesn’t even matter what you think you’re looking for, they’ll analyze and find the best way into your brain. It’s not done subtly, but would be forgiven for thinking no one cares at all.”
“Forever Friction”
The third track widens out. Klyman lists the constants in the world: love, compassion, understanding, and also endless wars. “Conflict without resolution is nothing new. The desire to prolong these conflicts for primacy and profit is also nothing new.” That inheritance gets passed down physically and mentally, a constant state of unrest, and he closes on a question. “How will the coming generations view what we’re doing now? Will all the slogans and symbols still apply then as they do now? It sometimes feels like they will only know war.”
The lineup on the EP is Dave Klyman (guitars, vocals), Michael Fennen (bass), Jeff Meyers (drums), and John Lowe (guitars).
All songs were written and performed by Omit All. Boldizar recorded and mixed at Retro City Studios; Andy Clarke handled mastering at the same studio. Additional recording came from Klyman and Kristin Eliason, with Jack Steinman and John Lowe assisting. “Lights Up on The End Stage” is out today on Bandcamp and streaming services.
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