For a certain subset of music fans within a certain age, there are few bands as important as The Chariot. For former scene kids who put their girl jeans through their paces two-stepping in the church gym or muddied in the mosh pits of Cornerstone Music Festival, The Chariot represents the absolute epitome of mid-2000s Christcore.

And a decade and a half later, their debut record, Everything is Alive, Everything is Breathing, Nothing is Dead, Nothing is Bleeding is still every bit as chaotic and cathartic as it was back then, containing the blueprint for every riff, breakdown, and fist-pounding one-liners that throngs of metalcore bands are still trying to recapture.

When Josh Scogin left Norma Jean after their masterful debut Bless The Martyr and Kiss the Child, it felt a bit like a gut punch. That album was the undisputed standard-bearer of that scene; a brutal, peerless record that was at both cerebral and animalistic. What could possibly compare?

But then, Scogin introduced his new project: one that gave into the rawest instincts of the genre. Where even Norma Jean’s heaviest songs were written with their brains, Everything is Breathing… was written by the band’s collective guts. No opportunity for a breakdown is left untaken. There’s a spontaneity to the rapidly shifting rhythms and punctuations of panic-chords and squealing feedback that often makes it seem like the songs were written as a collaboration with a live mosh pit. In the oral history The Chariot, perhaps the most importance was given to the raw energy and chaos of the live shows, which often include Josh Scogin climbing the rafters, or poet Bradley Hathaway opening the show while seated in a large swing or thrashing around the stage (taking the Aaron Weiss role from Bless the Martyr’s “Memphis Will Be Laid to Waste”).

That spontaneity is only reinforced by the fact that this album was recorded entirely live, free of clicktrack or overdubs (barring a few samples, such as a voicemail recording at the end of the second track or the banjo lick that opens “Die Interviewer (I am Only Speaking German).” Additionally, the album was never mastered, eschewing the polish and artifice of a studio environment.

But that made-to-mosh, freeform composition does not extend itself to the lyrics—or at least the song titles, some of which have more songs than the songs themselves (such as the second track, “Someday, in the Event That Mankind Actually Figures Out What It Is That This World Revolves Around, Thousands of People are Going to Be Shocked and Perplexed to Find Out It Was Not Them. Sometimes, This Includes Me“). Scogin’s lyrics shift between war cries (“Before Atlanta, There Was Douglasville“) and morbid warnings of doomsday (the heavier-than-heavy “And Then Came Then“). He sometimes ignores the conventional wisdom of “better judgment,” leaning (intentionally?) into cliche and oversimplicity, seeming to write with the end goal of inspiring as many AIM away messages as possible. Nearly every song repeats a single phrase like a thesis statement, such as “My closet holds no bones” or “Waitress, hey waitress, make your peace,” or the theologically worrisome “This pistol is my ministry.”

My scene phase wasn’t long enough for me to have followed the Chariot through the rest of their career. But for those few guylinered, girl jeaned, two-stepping years, Everything Is Breathing… was almost like a sort of scripture to me. But now, as a more well-rounded (and rounder) adult, I’m delighted that nostalgia isn’t the only quality this record holds. It remains one of the most powerful, passionate, and punishing records I’ve ever heard; one that transcends the sum of its parts to become truly iconic.