When it comes to metal bands in Statesboro, there isn’t much to choose from. Most bands in Statesboro are country, but Atomic Peacemaker sets everyone else apart.

The band brings back the aggressive, raw energy of bands such as Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax. The band was created in 2020 in Ridgeland, South Carolina, by a couple a guys who met each other in high school.

“We all went to the same High School, my drummer and I went to the same school together all the way from K4 to senior year,” says Clayton Gantt, member of the band. “We all started playing our instruments at the same time in ninth-grade music class. We mostly played stuff like Van Halen, Dokken, and Ratt.”

In 2023, the main group started going to Georgia Southern and moved to Statesboro, and it wasn’t an easy change.

“It’s definitely been hard, freshman year and last year was hard, but we’ve gotten a lot better at managing it,” says Gantt. “We have all of our music equipment in this band room in our garage. We record everything in there.” 

Gantt is currently a junior studying for a degree in economics. When asked what the band’s plan was after graduation, he said, “Our plan after graduation is to keep playing and hopefully play even more now. We mainly want to play more all over the southeast as much as possible.”

The band currently has three demos and 2 singles out now, but they just released a new single called Preemptive Strike this September.