REVIEW: The Chariot – One Wing | Under the Gun Review

REVIEW: The Chariot – One Wing

August 30th, 2012

Adrian Garza

Artist: The Chariot
Album: One Wing
Genre: Avant-Garde Metalcore
Label: Good Fight Music

It’s been said that the art created from a particular artist has always been and will always be solely inspired off of the work of other artists. What that implies is that nothing is actually original, and will never be seen as original.

It’s obvious that whoever it was that said that couldn’t have even imagined the new ground that The Chariot would have broken with their fifth studio effort, One Wing.

I’m a firm believer that The Chariot have finally managed to get it just right this time around. Yes, the band still very much maintains the chaos that fans have grown to love over the band’s 8 years of existence, but One Wing will forever be labeled as the album where The Chariot decided to “go there” and back.

On this release, the opening track [“Forget”] actually sound like a proper opening track, the breather tracks [“Your”] sound like actual breather tracks, and not like interludes that are obviously filler. The closing track [“Cheek.”] –as moderately paced as it is– makes for the perfect candidate of a closing track from The Chariot.

Other standout cuts that are scattered in between all of the above include “First”, a song that fully grasps The Chariot’s southern background by the horns and rides it out instrumentally for a major chunk of the song, only to have Josh Scogin howl away in the closing 30 seconds . “And” is a track that borrows a portion of the same 50’s clip that was made famous off of “Calvin Makenzie”, one of the songs off of Long Live.

If anybody knows the band’s past work, they wouldn’t be all too surprised to know that the four-piece have had a tendency to throw caution to the wind in terms of songwriting. The band likes to get weird, unique, and unconventional. If this album isn’t weird, unique, and unconventional, I don’t know what is. The inclusion of piano, tremolo pedals, and even strings have shaped the album into something that simply blindsides the listener.

I think what I’ve been hinting at through this review is that this appears to be the album that The Chariot have been tirelessly striving to record ever since day one, and that’s what makes this among the more memorable releases of 2012.

Rating: 9.5/10

Written by: Adrian Garza