One night this summer, triggered by news of President Donald Trump making yet another inflammatory statement, Zach Ellis of Dead Tooth wrote the chorus to the recently dropped song, “I Hate the Precedent,” by band Death Tooth and No Surrender. 

The chords were brooding, angry and tense, the way he felt about the state of the world. 

“For me, it’s hard to navigate putting out politically charged music, but I felt like this was really obvious — I couldn’t think of anything else, I wasn’t feeling much else about the world other than how terrible of a situation we’re in,” Ellis said in a phone call from his apartment in Bushwick. “When it’s almost impossible to write about other stuff that you cherish or love, that’s the appropriate time to say something.”