Three songs that arrived together in the spring of 2026 while Joshua David Thayer was working on other material. Warmonger — the EP and the title track — captures a fierce, uncomfortable batch that pushed its way into the studio uninvited and asked to be released.
The three songs on Warmonger — the title track, “That’s The Way I Roll,” and “Stay Small” — are each voiced from positions of power. 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 voice from the top instructing the people below to stay small, stay dumb, stay quiet. The point of view is consistent across all three: the perspective of those acting upon the world, not those being acted upon.
Thayer didn’t set out to write a topical record. The songs came in the same way his others have — guitar in hand, drum machine running, listening to what arrives in response. What arrived this spring was this. “I was working through a pile of other demos when these three started pushing their way through,” he says. “I didn’t sit down to write about any of this. I picked up a guitar, started building drum beats, and these were the words that came back.”
The decision to release the EP only on Bandcamp, Subvert, and ScratchStream — and not on the larger streaming services — is its own kind of statement. Or, as Thayer put it: “Songs about the corporate machinery of power shouldn’t be feeding that very same machinery.”
The Process
Recorded, performed, and mixed at Brave Tiger Studio in Medford, Massachusetts in March and April of 2026. Mastered by Nick Zampiello at New Alliance East.
Tracklist
- Warmonger
- That’s The Way I Roll
- Stay Small