Wars and Rumors of Wars — The Chariot

Wars and Rumors of Wars is the third full-length album by The Chariot, the Christian hardcore band Josh Scogin started in Douglasville, Georgia, after he left Norma Jean in 2003. Solid State Records released it on May 5, 2009. It's ten songs in just over thirty minutes, produced by Matt Goldman, who'd also made The Fiancée two years earlier. If that record was the one where the band let hymn singers and guest stars into the room, this is the one where they shut the door and played as hard and as tight as they ever had.

The story

By 2009 the lineup had turned over again. Cross Rhythms' Andy Shaw noted that Scogin was the only original member left, and Jesus Freak Hideout said much the same. That could have made for a weaker record. Instead, most of the critics heard a band that had finally learned to write songs rather than just survive them.

The title comes straight out of the Bible. In Matthew 24:6, Jesus tells his disciples they "shall hear of wars and rumours of wars." Scogin told the site Metalpaths that the album's name comes from that verse, but that the wars he meant were "the battles that go on inside our heads." He said the same thing to Alternative Press. The war imagery is just imagery, he explained, and the songs are really about the mental fights over right and wrong and the daily struggle. He was firm that it was "nowhere meant to be a protest album."

It's also his most personal set of words up to that point. Scogin told Alternative Press that the mostly one-word song titles were all tied to his own life, including the death of his father about a year earlier, and that the lyrics were darker than anything he'd written before because of it. Asked by Metalpaths where his faith came from, he said it wasn't built on anything but experience, and that too many things had happened in his own life that he just couldn't deny.

The hand-stamped album

The packaging is part of the legend. The band hand-stamped, signed and numbered the first 25,000 CDs themselves, with each of the five members doing 5,000, and the first 300 were stamped in red ink for pre-orders. Solid State filmed the whole thing and posted it as a series of videos. Scogin told Noisecreep the idea came from "the DIY, punk rock days," when bands did everything themselves because they had to. He said it took about a week of stamping night and day to finish before the band left for tour. "It probably should have taken three weeks, but it was literally, like, no sleep," he said. They even got the pizza delivery guy to stamp a few.

There's one more trick in the packaging. Take the first and last letter of each song title in order, from "Teach:" through "Mrs. Montgomery Alabama III.," and they spell out "The end is nigh and so am I." It's not the first word game the band hid in its song titles. On The Fiancée, the first eight titles read in order make a short poem. This one fits an album named after a passage about the end of the age.

The sound

The big change, nearly everyone agreed, is structure. Shaw wrote that the old albums sometimes felt like "one long song," while this one "brings texture and definition." Brian Shultz at Alternative Press said it wasn't a big musical departure, but that the songs sounded "more fully realized" than anything the band had done before. He also warned that people with claustrophobia should "avoid at all costs."

It opens with "Teach:," which Shultz called "a brutal waltz." Shaw singled out the moment where the guitars drop away and Scogin screams "Victory is such a lonely word!" before the band crashes back in. "Evolve:" comes next, all stop-start bursts. "Impress." might be the best example of what the band can do in two minutes. Shaw and Shultz both heard it start at punk-rock speed before it drops into something darker and stranger.

"Giveth" is the album's biggest song. Shultz called it "one of the band's most epic compositions to date," and Under the Gun Review's James Shotwell said Scogin's voice soars "from the gutter to the sky" on it. Then "Abandon." slows everything down. Shotwell compared it to "a church collapsing at a slow pace while the priest screams for mercy," and that's about right.

"Daggers" is the one with the official video, and it's the friendliest way in. Shotwell called it "the most approachable on the album by a mile," starting with punk drive and breaking down slowly into something huge. Scogin told Metalpaths the band shot the video in front of a green screen and let the video company build the concept from the lyrics. He called it "by far my favorite video." After the forty-four-second blast of "Oversea," the six-minute "Mrs. Montgomery Alabama III." closes the album. Shotwell said it showed the band could hold together a longer piece than ever before, and even the album's harshest critics gave it credit.

What the critics said

Alternative Press gave it 4/5, and Shultz signed off by saying the only rumor worth spreading was that this was "the Chariot's best yet." Christianity Today's Andrea Dawn Goforth also gave it 4/5, calling it "a sort of organized musical chaos that never allows your ear to settle." She liked that it hopped from punk to Norma Jean-style hardcore to '80s metal from song to song. Cross Rhythms gave it 7/10. Shaw didn't think it would put the band "at the top of the metalcore pile," but he called it "a marked improvement."

Not everyone was convinced. Jesus Freak Hideout's Timothy Estabrooks gave it 3/5. He heard "very little variation within each track, and even less between tracks," and called it "pretty mediocre." Thomas at Metal Reviews scored it 76/100 and made a similar point. He loved it for the first ten spins, then found the songs running together, and suggested newcomers start with The Fiancée. A user review on Sputnikmusic was harsher still and called it generic.

The verdict

The complaint about sameness is fair. Thirty minutes of Scogin at full roar doesn't leave much room to breathe, and the middle of the album can blur if you're not paying attention. But the best songs here, "Teach:," "Giveth," "Daggers" and the closing "Mrs. Montgomery Alabama III.," are as strong as anything the band made. The writing is tighter than before, and the faith at its center is honest rather than tidy. This is a record about fighting the war inside your own head, by a man who'd just lost his father and kept believing anyway. Start with the official video for "Daggers," then play it top to bottom. For more on the band, see our The Chariot page, and for where Scogin started, our review of Norma Jean's Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child.

7/10

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