In a way, “Dystopian Chronicles” was developing at the very beginning of our Warhog adventure and I thought it would be fun to tell a little about how it was written and why it took longer than anticipated to get it recorded and released.
Back in 2019, while Eric was working on music that would eventually become the foundation for “Call of the Voyager,” I was also working on material that was heavy in nature. One was written off a drum recording sent to me by Blake – the drummer from our former band which people might remember as Minor Joe. I’d put some rough guitars to it and had the lyrics worked out and so I sat on this song, “Eulogy,” and other songs while Eric started feeding me the meat and bones for “Saga,” “Voyager,” “Victorious,” etc.
As music for the “Voyager” project was developing, we put Warhog together as a band. Originally, we thought Blake would be interested as Justin had allowed himself to be conscripted into service. Warhog had a set’s worth of songs, and I felt that “Eulogy” was going to be a good track to include. It would be a eulogy (get it?) of sorts to the band that was, but a defined shift into what we’d be doing going forward. It turned out that Blake didn’t really connect with the direction that Eric and I had been working towards and decided Warhog wasn’t for him.
We brought Ben on board, continued to write songs for “Call of the Voyager,” and shelved anything that didn’t fit. So, some stuff got ended up on “Voyager,” and some stuff got put in a Dropbox folder for later.
We iteratively worked on those recordings into 2022 with Eric and Ben capturing final takes and mixing tracks in the summer. However, we stayed creative, and material would appear sporadically in a “new songs” folder in our Dropbox. I was now taking demos from Eric and recording scratch vocals to his material and writing my own songs and recording those. Our demos were built using MIDI drums and once we had a couple guitar tracks and some vocals, we had a song. We’d name it, upload it, and move on to the next. It’s accurate to say we were working on two records at the same time, just at opposite ends of the process. When we released “Call of the Voyager,” on August 5th, the four of us in Warhog could also listen to its follow up: “The Dystopian Chronicles,” in its entirety. I even had it on my phone with some fun temporary artwork.
It's worth noting here that “Voyager” was a full concept album and we released it in its entirety – a decision I still think was right - but after it was out, we didn’t have anything new to help maintain momentum with social media and promotions. “Chronicles” was a complete record thematically, but it wasn’t narratively connected, so we decided to break it up into three releases (mid and late ’23 and early ’24) so that we had new music to promote more often while also playing shows.
Ben was struggling with pain in his knee, so we took a short break in the spring of ’23 for him to get some relief with the plan to capture drum tracks for EP 1 in July for an August release. We continued to work on mixing, thinking Ben was going to be better by summer. “Chronicles” songs were basically ready to release except for swapping out MIDI drums for real drums. Well, Ben doesn’t come back and decides to leave the band in June. We’ve not only got to say goodbye to playing music with our friend and find someone to fill his place, but we’re going to miss our intended release dates.
We played a couple of already-booked shows that summer with Chad filling in, and for a while it seemed that he would come on full-time, but our plans and his availability didn’t match up. We considered having Chad record the “Chronicles” EPs for us, but that’s a big project and we didn’t want to find ourselves auditioning or even gigging with a new drummer while Chad was doing the studio work. It made sense to pause on releases and find someone who could learn “Voyager” tracks for shows and learn “Chronicles” quickly so we could capture drums over a few sessions with limited prep time in between.
We connected with Robert at the start of 2024 and suddenly, Warhog was back on track in a big way. We immediately put him through the wringer with some amazing gigs and then got him into the studio for a new standalone single, “Warhog,” before tracking drums for “Chronicles” in March. We released the first single off the new EP, “Hunt of the Cybertooth,” in May. Finally, people were starting to hear some “new” material from the band that we’d all collectively been sitting on for almost two years.
Finally, this brings us to June 28 of 2024 and the release of “The Dystopian Chronicles, Vol. 1,” the first of three EPs that we’ll be releasing over the next several months.
Remember, “Chronicles” started as the “other songs” that were developing in the early days of the band. Once there were three or four songs, it was clear that we were expressing some dread about the way things were in the world and our place in it. As a life-long fan of sci-fi, I always enjoy a story set in a good and screwed up futureworld and we wrote to flesh out that theme. Its not hard to get into that mindset when you’re standing in line with 100 people, waiting to get vaccinated at Dallas Market Hall on a Saturday morning.
“Chronicles” is about what we feel is wrong with the world and where we’ll go if we don’t do something about it. By not understanding the mistakes of our past and refusing to do better, we’re kneecapping our future. Stylistically, “Chronicles” songs are more diverse compared to the doom-themed “Call of the Voyager,” and “Vol. 1” is just a taste of what that diversity is going to be like; guitar synths, punchy, single-type songs, and (hopefully) catchy hooks and choruses. The coming releases are similarly varied and we’re really looking forward to listeners’ reactions when you get to hear them. Again, we’ve been living with these songs for a while and so we’re excited to finally be sharing them with you.
“Chronicles, Vol. 2” will be out in November, and then “Chronicles, Vol. 3” will be out in January of 2025.