Wage War Brings The Swamp to California

Heather Vandemark
May 2
3 min read

Wage War brought the swamp to San Diego as part of their It Calls Me By My Name Tour with support from Orthodox and Nevertel!

Orthodox got the night started. They're a metalcore band from Nashville, Tennessee, originally formed in 2011. The band's sound style is described by lead singer Adam Easterling as "big pants music", blending traditional metallic hardcore with some groove metal aggression. Unfortunately we had just missed them due to traffic but we’re not missing them next time!

Up next was fellow Florida-based band Nevertel! They have a really unique sound as they blend elements of Hip-Hop, Nu-metal, and Alternative Rock. They also have two singers, and the dual vocal dynamic between Jeremy Michael and Raul Lopez is amazing to watch live. This was an extra special night because it was their first time playing San Diego! They opened with "Break the Silence" which is a collaboration that features Sleep Theory. They also played their new song “OTHERSIDE” released on April 21st of this year. Towards the end of the set, Jeremy and Raul both jumped off the stage and went down to stand on the barricade. They played other hits, “Sacrifice”, “Everything on My Mind”, and “Somethings”, before closing out with “Criminal”. After the show Jeremy walked down the barricade greeting fans. We got to chat with him for a minute and he was such a sweetheart and very gracious!

Wage War has quickly become one of my top most listened to bands in the last couple of years. I love Britton Bond as lead vocalist with Cody Quistad playing guitar and singing beautiful clean vocals, and then the Breakdowns! A little fun fact, Cody has written/co-written over 97 songs for different bands including Falling in Reverse, Memphis May Fire, A Day to Remember, and The Ghost Inside just to name a few. I saw them just a few days ago at Sick New World where they played their latest EP, IT CALLS ME BY NAME, which was released on April 17th in its entirety. My jaw dropped at about 2 mins into the song “Purify” for about 15 seconds.

On this night in San Diego they had a cool swampy stage set up for the new EP theme. It kind of reminded me of the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean with the little shack you float by. Cody has a bit of a different look since the last time I’ve seen him and at first I thought it was a fill in, then I heard his voice, that’s definitely Cody! He looks absolutely amazing. They played all five songs off the EP with a total of 19 songs across their whole discography. They took an audience poll to choose between “Who I Am” and “Relapse”, while we screamed our loudest for “Relapse”, “Who I Am” was the overwhelming winner. If you’ve seen Wage War before, they definitely mixed up the setlist, usually closing out with “Manic”, so some people thought it was over, but stopped in their tracks when they realized there’s more! This tour is just getting started with plenty more dates to catch them!