Wage War

Wage War is on tour — 40 upcoming shows; next: Jul 30, 2026 in Fremantle, Australia.

• Metal

Wage War is an American metalcore band from Ocala, Florida formed in 2010 under the name Empires. The band signed to Fearless Records in 2015. The band consists of vocalist Briton Bond, rhythm guitarist and clean vocalist Cody Quistad, lead guitarist Seth Blake, bassist Chris Gaylord, and drummer Stephen Kluesener. Background Wage War started in 2010 in Ocala, Florida. The band was originally named Empires and consisted of Briton Bond (unclean vocals), Cody Quistad (rhythm guitar/clean vocals), Seth Blake (lead guitar), Jordan Pierce (bass) and David Rau (drums). Rau quit the band to focus on teaching and is now residing as a teacher at West Port High School in the band’s hometown. The band changed their name to Wage War and hired on Chris Gaylord to replace Pierce and Stephen J. Kluesener to replace Rau. In 2015, the band signed to Fearless Records, with a Jeremy McKinnon/Andrew Wade-produced single. After being signed to Fearless, the band released their debut album, Blueprints. Their second album Deadweight was released with Fearless Records on August 4, 2017. Wage War has done a number of tours, including playing on the entirety of the Vans Warped Tour in 2016, and A Day to Remember's Self Help Festival in 2017. The band has also opened for artists such as August Burns Red, Chelsea Grin, I Prevail, The Amity Affliction, Every Time I Die, For Today and Of Mice & Men. The band played with Parkway Drive on their mini June 2017 tour. The band will also embark on their first national headliner this July, in support of their new album Deadweight. On January 9, 2019, the band released a single titled Low through their label Fearless Records. Six months later, on July 9, they released a second single, Who I Am. Then later that month, on July 30, 2019, the band released two singles, Prison and Me Against Myself. Upon doing this the band unveiled their plans for a third studio album, revealing the albums title, tracklist, and release date. Pressure, their third album, is planned for release on August 30, 2019. On March 18, 2019, Wage War lost all of their MySpace content from 2016 and earlier in "a server migration gone wrong" from the Empires era (with the exception of The Fall of Kings EP). It was widely reported that over 50 million songs and 12 years worth of content was permanently lost, and there was no backup.

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