WAGE WAR — Briton Bond [lead vocals], Cody Quistad [rhythm guitar, clean vocals], Seth Blake [lead guitar], Chris Gaylord [bass], and Stephen Kluesener [drums] — just digitally dropped their fifth album STIGMA on June 21 via Fearless Records. The band has just announced its upcoming Fall 2024 headline tour, which kicks off September 29 and runs through November 3. ERRA, thrown, and Fame on Fire will also appear. The tour includes a stop in Cincinnati, OH at The Andrew J Brady Music Center® on October 2.
"Our fifth album STIGMA is a collection of songs with their own identity," the band says. "Each song conveys a message and relatable emotion, without two being alike. We wrote the album over the course of the last couple years as a creative unified effort, which we hope is displayed by the continued sense of energy throughout the record. We aimed to refine our versatility and are excited to watch these songs come to life on the road."
Traveling a constant forward trajectory at lightspeed, Wage War not only push their own sound forward, but they also propel heavy music into new territory. The Florida quintet has always tempered a pummeling metallic onslaught with unshakable melodies. A near-decade grind naturally brought Wage War to this point. They have unleashed a string of fan favorite albums, including Blueprints [2015], Deadweight [2017], Pressure [2019], and Manic [2021]. Beyond looks from SPIN, Modern Drummer, American Songwriter, Revolver, Guitar World, and more, KERRANG! hailed the latter as "their greatest album yet," and DORK raved, "It's an embracing of being metalheads, popheads and just fans of good songs. On more than one occasion, there's an earworm poking its head up through the dirt." They also put up numbers, tallying hundreds of millions of streams boosted by the likes of "Stitch," "Low," "Manic," and "Circle The Drain." On their fifth full-length offering STIGMA [Fearless Records], Wage War outfit their signature style with industrial grit and electronic sheen, leveling up into the future in the process with singles such as "MAGNETIC" and "NAIL5."