The Chariot Take DIY Route With New Album

Christian metalcore act The Chariot wanted to do something unique with their new album, 'Wars and Rumors of Wars,' which hit stores earlier this month. So, they decided to press the first 25,000 copies of the album themselves. It was a good idea, says frontman Josh Scogin, until it actually came time to sit down and do it.

"It started as an idea," he explains, inspired by "the DIY, punk rock days. You just did it all yourself because that's all you could do. There was not such thing as a label. And then we go from, how do you take that idea and make it a reality when you're talking about 25,000 copies and your talking about actually getting, you know, the powers that be to agree to this. We sort of laughed and it was going to be crazy but we can do it. Then, it was crazy. And more so than we would have ever imagined. It was fun and I'm sure we would all do it again."

In what they described as "sweatshop" conditions, the band hand-stamped every single copy of the album over the course of one week, working night and day to get the discs finished before they had to leave for tour. By the end of it, the band's hands were bruised.

"It probably should have taken three weeks, but it was literally, like, no sleep," Scogin recalls. "You wake up and start stamping, which is literally, you put the stamp on the ink, stamp on the pad, flip it over, and do it again. Open it up, do it again two more times. And you do that all day long. You don't eat unless you order a pizza, in which case, a guy brings it to you and you just keep doing it until you sleep."

The band even talked the pizza delivery guy into stamping a few. "It was getting kind of stressful towards the end there, but it all worked out and it worked out really well," Scogin adds.

So, what happens when the band sells all 25,000 copies of "Wars and Rumors of Wars?" Scogin says the band have a "few tricks up our sleeve," but they're not 100 percent sure what they'll end up doing.

"We've talked about maybe doing it again, with a different cover, and make it special again. But I don't think we will be able to keep doing it, but it is something that we will have to run by our label and see if they're okay with it and stuff. Otherwise, the Plan B is to make a generic cover and mass produce it like normal CDs are made. Which we hope we can avoid, but it all depends on finances and stuff."