The Songs
Warmonger is a three-song EP — twelve minutes of fuzzy, distorted indie rock, each track voiced from a different position of power. The title track is thick and melodic, big distorted guitars carrying a hook through choruses where the vocals start to fray at the edges. “That’s The Way I Roll” lands in groovier territory, a bit of a Morphine cast to the verses before the jangly-distorted guitars push it back toward rock. “Stay Small” closes the set: angular, jangly, alternating pointed directives in the verses with strummy choruses of big chords and layered melodies.
The conceit is consistent across all three: each song is voiced from the perspective of someone in charge. A warmonger insisting the killing will end only when he says it ends. A chronic liar boasting that no one dares call him a villain. A controlling voice from the top instructing the people below to stay small, stay dumb, stay quiet. No empathy, no sympathy — just command and control.
It’s a sharper, more pointed register than Thayer’s previous solo work. The songs make their case without raising their voice, layered and indirect in their construction — pointed in what they describe, restrained in how they describe it.
The Arrival
The three songs arrived together over a couple of weeks in March and April 2026, while Thayer was working on other material. They bullied their way into the studio uninvited, and asked to be released.
“I was sorting through a pile of other demos when these three started pushing their way through. I didn’t sit down to write about any of these topics in particular. I picked up a guitar, started building drum beats, and the material itself coerced these words into place.”
What Thayer didn’t set out to write is what the spring of 2026 produced anyway. The EP captures a moment more than a plan — songs that picked their own time to appear, in a voice the songwriter wouldn’t have chosen on his own behalf but couldn’t quite refuse once they were there.
Credits
Written, performed, recorded, and mixed by Joshua David Thayer at Brave Tiger Studio, March–April 2026. Mastered by Nick Zampiello at New Alliance East. Released by Brave Tiger Records, BTR-008, 2026.