END: Their Own Animal
“We’re only doing it because we really like it and it becomes pretty carefree in that sense.” The members of END may view what they do as a bit of fun on the side of their other more regular gigs, but you’d never guess that from the music. Over the past six years or so, the band seem to have made it their mission to make hardcore darker, bleaker and heavier than ever before, and as they gear up to release their second full-length The Sin Of Human Frailty one might suggest that they’ve never done it better.
The voice behind that quote at the top is that of the band’s inimitable guitarist and producer Will Putney, a man of many talents who is literally just home from a UK tour with another of his wonderful projects in BETTER LOVERS. “In my head they’re all different things,” he explains when we ask him if it ever gets hard to switch gears between the many bands he is involved in. “I feel like if they were similar bands, it would be way harder, but everything has its own vision and plan and it feels just completely different, so it’s not hard. It’s like watching a comedy or watching a horror movie, they just feel different enough to me where I don’t feel like there’s too much of that kind of mental overlap.”
Of course, that would make END the horror movie, he laughs. With Putney and fellow guitarist Gregory Thomas handling the bulk of the writing, END deal in violence unparalleled – a harrowing concoction of grind, metallic hardcore, death and black metal from which no light escapes. “We definitely share a lot of common ground with the type of music we like,” offers Putney. “Over the years we’ve talked shop about things we like and things we wish bands did all the time so it is just this natural flow of us having a really good understanding of what we want… It’s almost like the ideas for the record are there before the music is in a way because we’ve had so much of this dialogue about it that we’re on a really good wavelength and on the same page with what we want to execute.”
Listen to The Sin Of Human Frailty and you’ll notice that part of that plan this time around was to dial up the band’s industrial influences – as heard particularly prominently on recent single Thaw. “I’ve been fortunate to work with a couple bands that get to the industrial space like HARM’S WAY and STREET SECTS and VEIN.FM and stuff like that, and I really like doing that stuff,” elaborates Putney. “I just wanted an outlet for it too and so did Greg so it was like ‘let’s see if we can have some of those elements in our music’. We both have a pretty good catalogue of stuff that we like from that world, and we never really had a chance to write any of it, so it goes back to us just doing what we want to do with the band.”
“It was a lot of work putting the songs like that together,” he adds on what it required of him specifically as a producer. “But I did my homework on it, I knew what I wanted. It just took a little thought and prep to get a couple of drum machines that I felt would do the thing I was looking for, and some more exploration into what is creating this music that I like and have never really tried to make on my own. There was a bit of an initial learning curve of like, ‘how do I make stuff sound like this?’, and once I figured it out it was just fun to use the tools.”
There it is again – fun. END may sound like they’re trying to split the universe asunder but they’re all having a great time doing it. “We’re all just friends, and we don’t live together 12 months out of the year so we’re not at each other’s throats like some bands can be,” smiles Putney. “We’ve been okay just accepting people for who they are. I feel like everybody in this band probably has their own quirk or two, but we haven’t really ever had an argument or anything crazy like that.”
Indeed, this shared vision runs through all that END do, from music videos and artwork to the extensive vinyl packaging which Putney promises is the craziest he’s ever seen for any project he’s been involved in. “If we’re gonna do a band like this that’s not a full-time band, we want all those elements to feel correct all the time,” he emphasises. “It’s not like every month I need a new merch spread or we need a million records, so we’ve been able to take our time and get things to a place where we’re all happy with them.”
Such patience and attention to detail was always going to yield something special – not to mention the stacked CVs of all involved – but, for the avoidance of doubt, The Sin Of Human Frailty is the best thing END have ever done and one of the best and heaviest records of any genre you’ll hear all year. “On this record I’m just happy that I feel like the band really has its own identity,” concludes Putney. “I just want people to see us as our own animal, not a version of something else that already exists.”
The Sin Of Human Frailty is out now via Closed Casket Activities.
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