On June 7, 1844, a group of insiders published a single issue of a newspaper. Three days later, it was destroyed by order of the man it exposed. Seventeen days after that, he was dead.
The newspaper was the Nauvoo Expositor. The man was Joseph Smith.
This album tells that story.
WHAT YOU’RE ABOUT TO HEAR
Every lyric on this album is drawn from primary sources - the actual words of the people who lived this story. We didn’t embellish. We didn’t dramatize. We amplified.
The whistleblowers who published the Expositor weren’t outsiders or enemies. They were the inner circle:
- William Law - Second Counselor in the First Presidency, Joseph Smith’s right hand in church governance
- Jane Law - William’s wife, who refused the Prophet’s advances and signed a sworn affidavit
- Austin Cowles - First Counselor to the Stake President, who heard the secret revelation read aloud and “dared not teach such laws”
These people knew everything. They tried private reformation first. They begged for repentance. When that failed, they concluded that “forbearance has ceased to be a virtue” and published the truth.
The Expositor documented:
- Secret plural marriages, publicly denied
- Women coerced in hidden rooms under penalty of death
- Theological innovations taught privately, contradicting public doctrine
- Financial exploitation of converts who had sacrificed everything
- The concentration of religious, civic, military, and political power in one man
Three days after publication, the press was destroyed. The type scattered. The papers burned.
But the words survived.
180 years later, we’re singing them.
WHY THIS MATTERS BEYOND MORMONISM
This is not an anti-Mormon album. This is an album about what happens when power goes unchecked. When institutions protect themselves instead of their people. When “the disease” is hidden and “the remedy cannot be applied.”
The patterns documented in 1844 are not unique to one religion or one century:
The silencing of whistleblowers. Those who speak truth to power are tried in secret, cut off, erased. “Our law condemnest no man until he is heard” - but they were condemned without a hearing.
The weaponization of faith. “God has revealed that you are mine.” When divine authority is claimed to override consent, there is no appeal. Refuse and be damned. Submit and be destroyed.
The impossible bind. The Expositor documented women who were “thunder-struck” - trapped between obedience and conscience, with damnation promised either way. This bind exists wherever absolute authority meets vulnerable people.
The great throat. Wealth flows in and is “swallowed up by the one great throat, from whence there is no return.” Financial exploitation wrapped in spiritual language. Sacrifice demanded while leaders prosper.
The burning of the press. When truth threatens power, power destroys the messenger. But “you cannot burn a story. You cannot burn a name.”
These patterns repeat. In religious institutions. In corporations. In governments. In movements. Wherever humans concentrate power and suppress accountability, the disease spreads.
The Expositor writers believed that “the remedy can never be applied, unless the disease is known.”
This album makes the disease known.
THE WOMEN AT THE CENTER
The heart of this album is Act II: The Women.
The Expositor’s preamble describes foreign converts - women who crossed oceans “as they supposed, to glorify God” - who were instead summoned to secret rooms, sworn to silence under penalty of death, and told that “God Almighty has revealed it to him, that she should be his Spiritual wife.”
One woman is mentioned specifically: “A departed spirit, once the resident of St. Louis, shall yet cry aloud for vengeance.”
We don’t know her name. She was erased from history. She died, and they said it was “some wintry chill, some casual indisposition.” No one connected her death to “the mental malady that previously sapped her strength.”
She was “like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove - graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying at its heart.”
This album gives her a voice. And Jane Law. And every woman who was told that refusing a prophet meant damnation.
Their stories are not history. They are warnings.
HOW TO LISTEN
The album is structured in five acts:
Act I: The Awakening (Tracks 1-3) Who spoke and why The whistleblowers introduce themselves, explain why they broke their silence, and expose the central lie.
Act II: The Women (Tracks 4-7) What happened to the victims A woman crosses an ocean full of faith. She is summoned to a secret room. She surrenders. She withers. Another refuses - and fights back.
Act III: The Revelations (Tracks 8-10) What was taught in secret The actual doctrines, read aloud by witnesses. Plural marriage. Many gods. Financial schemes. Taught secretly, denied openly.
Act IV: The Power (Tracks 11-13) How control was maintained Prophet. Mayor. General. Presidential candidate. Secret trials. Charter abuses. The machinery of unchecked authority.
Act V: The Reckoning (Tracks 14-16) The silencing that wasn’t A rallying cry. A burning press. And the truth that survived.
Epilogue (Track 17) The question that remains 1890 ended the practice. But the revelation is still scripture. The fundamentalists still practice. Could it come back?
A NOTE ON HISTORICAL ACCURACY
We made a choice: Every claim in this album can be traced to the Nauvoo Expositor or verified historical record.
When the Expositor says “thunder-struck,” we say “thunder-struck.” When the Expositor says “the one great throat,” we say “the one great throat.” When the Expositor says “sudden day,” we say “sudden day.”
We are not interpreting. We are amplifying.
This matters because the power of this story lies in its documentation. These weren’t rumors or accusations. These were sworn affidavits. Eyewitness testimony. The words of people who knew they might die for speaking.
The Expositor’s preamble acknowledged the danger plainly: “We are aware, however, that we are hazarding every earthly blessing, particularly property, and probably life itself, in striking this blow at tyranny and oppression.”
They were right about the danger. Three days after publication, the press was destroyed. The next day, William Law was warned of a conspiracy to kill him and the other publishers. On June 12, they fled Nauvoo with their families - abandoning property, homes, everything they had built. Twenty days after publication, Joseph Smith was dead at Carthage.
The publishers escaped with their lives, but barely. William Law later reflected: “What saved me from death in 1844 was, 1, my caution; 2, the devotion of my detectives and 3, Joseph himself.”
In 1887 - forty-three years later - an elderly William Law agreed to be interviewed about those events. At 78 years old, his eyes filled with tears when he spoke of why he published the Expositor: “I wanted to show them… that I had not been in a fraud willingly.”
He had hazarded everything. He survived to old age. And the truth survived with him.
Now you’re about to hear it sung.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
The Expositor’s preamble opens with these words:
“It is with the greatest solicitude for the salvation of the Human Family, and of our own souls, that we have this day assembled.”
They wrote for the salvation of the human family. Not just their community. Humanity.
Because the disease they documented - the abuse of power, the silencing of truth, the exploitation of faith - is a human disease. It appears wherever people trust and others betray. Wherever institutions protect themselves instead of their people. Wherever the vulnerable have no recourse against the powerful.
The Expositor writers believed that naming the disease was the first step toward cure.
We believe that too.
“The remedy can never be applied, unless the disease is known.” — Nauvoo Expositor, June 7, 1844
Press play.
Lo, it is sudden day.