Wage War // Stigma
What a disappointment. It seemed like Wage War was getting back on track when they released ‘Manic,’ but this is awful. Might be even worse than ‘Pressure.’
I just moved back to California so I was driving with my dad and he was listening to Octane on Sirius XM. Wage War was the third song that popped up, and in that moment, the band’s aspirations became crystal clear. They’re making music for my dad and trying to secure radio playtime on the channels that play Five Finger Death Punch and Disturbed. After a few more songs, we switched over to the real metal station and they were playing The Acacia Strain and Knocked Loose.
Knocked Loose isn’t purely metalcore, but they’re close enough to illustrate the huge divide between heavy metalcore and Octane metalcore. It’s even crazier that I first discovered Wage War when they opened for Chelsea Grin in 2016. I can’t believe how far they’ve fallen.
The songs on ‘Stigma’ don’t feel like real songs. The electronic, somewhat cyberpunk undercurrents keep the energy high, but there’s little substance otherwise. You turn them on and immediately forget what you’re listening to.
I knew we were in for a rough ride when they released “Magnetic” as the first single. It sounds like a song that barely makes the cut as a B-side on the deluxe version of the album, and that’s what they decided to lead with? And then they released “Nail5,” giving listeners whiplash as they tried to reassure everyone that they can still be heavy (while, in reality, all they did was create a terrible Bad Omens cover song).
The only cohesive theme, style, or whatever across the whole album is that everything is unbelievably cringey. I have second hand embarrassment listening to ‘Stigma,’ partly because the songs suck, but mostly because it’s never been more clear that Wage War has no artistic vision. Each song is an attempt to pander to a different audience and widen their listener base. And that’s it – that’s the entire purpose of this album. Their disjointed approach spread them so thin that they failed to do anything well.
And please don’t tell me that Wage War is more popular than ever. That isn’t a metric that you should ever care about, especially when the entire purpose of this album was to grow their listener numbers. Asking Alexandria and Parkway Drive are bigger than ever too, but nobody is passionate about them anymore. It’s the same with Wage War – they went from being one of the most exciting metalcore bands in 2015 – 2018 to a band that we mostly try to ignore now. The downfall needs to be studied. Sorry I wasted a newsletter feature on this.
