Wage War released Manic on 1 October 2021 through Fearless Records. It was the Florida band's fourth album, arriving two years after Pressure had pushed their cleaner side further forward.
Manic keeps that melodic reach but makes the contrast sharper. ‘Circle The Drain’ and ‘If Tomorrow Never Comes’ sit beside the direct weight of ‘High Horse’ and ‘Death Roll’. The title track brings electronics into the foreground without dropping the breakdown that closes it.
That split is the album's clearest identity. Wage War did not make a separate heavy record and radio record; they put both instincts into the same tracklist and let the changes happen song by song.
Five years later, Manic reads as the reset between Pressure and Stigma: the point where the band stopped treating accessibility and aggression as two different versions of Wage War.
