Album Review: End You - Aimless Dread
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
This debut album from one-man-band, End You, the property of Eric Smith, is a fascinating experience from start to finish. Packed so full of heavy riffs and huge slices of colossal guitar that the forty-five minutes spent in its company will leave you both physically and emotionally exhausted.
Aimless Dread does not care to keep itself within the confines of a single genre and throughout its dozen tracks you find yourself engaged in a debate as to what it is you’re listening to. Is it Metal? Is it Punk? Or is it some hybrid of genres and styles, sewn together to create a beast of both startling beauty and abhorrent terror.
The unrelenting landscape of the music delivers wave after wave of devastating low end, staccato guitar stabs crash like waves against angular rock formations. There are moments during the first three tracks of Aimless Dread that you feel you have a handle on the music, only to have it ripped from your grasp with another dissonant movement.
Across those opening songs, SLPWLKR, Old Haunt and The Call you’ll begin to recognise the nihilistic nature of the destructive riffs and the bile-infused vocals. You may even start to think that your heightened senses are somehow protecting you from what is hiding inside the chords.
The cruelty within the instrumental, Equinox is in the passive melody and progressive guitar spirals. Beginning with a gothic, neo-industrial motif before settling on a base of rock-solid rhythm, the tune forms something of a respite from the apocalypse happening around it.
Despite the disparate musical elements across Aimless Dread, End You have managed their positioning with a deft skill. Metalcore and Noise of X’d Out vie comfortably with the driving rhythms of Copstomp and Alt Delete, while the Nu influences of Widowed complement the edgy modern riffing heard on Asterisk.
Perhaps the most curved of balls thrown by End You here are the doomy Orb Weaver and Solstice; both are constructed from the grimmest riffs that would slake the thirst of any doom-hound out there. There are moments listening to the instrumental Solstice that you expect Lee Dorian to start singing.
The closing It Gazes Back is another foray into the industrial, this time with the guitar grinding above an unrelentingly low and pummelling bottom end. By the time Aimless Dread has come to its conclusion you’ll find yourself trembling with relief that such a nightmare journey has come to an end and you’ve been delivered safely.
However, the uncompromising intensity of the journey will have buried itself within your psyche and somehow, something intangible will compel you back to make the trip again.
