The Chariot Brought the ‘Cool’ Factor on Tour With P.O.D.

You might've thought that the Chariot would have been out of their element on a tour with gargantuan rap-metallers P.OD. -- but the Douglasville, Ga. act was picked precisely because they weren't as accessible. P.O.D.'s management was considering doing a large tour with radio-promoted bands. "'Or we're going to do a cool tour,'" vocalist Josh Scogin said, paraphrasing P.O.D.'s management. "That's the way they worded it. And they said, 'If we did a cool tour, we want it to be cool bands that take it back to the streets' is what they said. So that is us in their world."

Noisecreep caught up with the band on their Wars and Rumors of Wars Tour with the Color Morale and Inhale/Exhale. "At the end of the day, since their CD wasn't doing well," Scogin continued, referring to P.O.D.'s 'Testify' release, "they figured doing their little 'streets' would be a little more beneficial for where they were at the time. So they picked us. It was awesome, though. I really enjoyed that tour a lot." The tour, also with Maylene and the Sons of Disaster and Pillar, occurred in the spring of 2006.

Though the tour was a wonderful chance for the band to expose their music to a wider audience, Scogin carved out expectations realistically, knowing that the band's experimental brand of random suckerpunch rhythm metal might fall on deaf ears. "It went over the way we thought it would," Scogin said. "And keeping in mind that there are like 2,000 kids, so there would be a handful of people that would really be into it. And there are people that come to our shows today that saw us first there -- I just talked to a kid just last night who said the same thing."

Metal by nature is very closed in that it appeals to a certain slab of demographic -- an industry fact felt more keenly by more abrasive bands like the Chariot. Despite this, Scogin hopes his band can extend its reach further within the wide umbrella of hard rock and aggressive music audiences. "We try to do tours like that. We try to do tours that open our horizons and reach out to people that. Maybe the majority of the people don't get it, but there's a handful that do and I think they sort of appreciate it. And I know P.O.D. thought it was cool, because it was such a different tour for them," he said.

"It was really good for us, and it was really a lot more professional tour than what we're used to," Scogin admitted. "Which is kinda funny, because we're not really a professional band. They were really cool dudes, the P.O.D. guys, and they had a lot of grace with us and let us be idiots a lot of times."

The Chariot are currently touring Europe with Iwrestledabearonce.