END: “I’m glad people think we’re super, but I want this to have its own identity”

“I could use a few more hours in the day, for sure!” laughs Will Putney. When Kerrang! catches up with the guitarist, he’s briefly at home in New Jersey between UK and U.S. tours with Better Lovers. He’s certainly a busy fellow, what with being Fit For An Autopsy’s principal songwriter, not to mention his parallel career as an in-demand producer for the likes of Knocked Loose, Vein.fm and Counterparts.

Not that any of that is the reason we’re chatting today. Because he’s in yet another band, the disgustingly and disturbingly heavy END, who are about to unleash an absolute beast in the shape of second full-length The Sin Of Human Frailty. Mind you, the seeds for this project were sown from connections made through Will’s production work.

“END was an idea born out of my friendship with Brendan [Murphy, Counterparts vocalist],” Will recalls. “Over the years I kept having this itch to do a more aggressive hardcore band, and I knew he would be a good fit because we like a lot of the same stuff.”

With one-time Misery Signals guitarist Gregory Thomas sharing six-string duties, Jay Pepito of Blacklisted and Reign Supreme recruited on bass, and former Dillinger Escape Plan man Billy Rymer initially occupying the drum stool, END got to work creating music that was unlike anything the band’s members had done before.

“The initial conversations were just about doing aggressive ’90s hardcore, in the style of bands like Turmoil, and then bringing in some of the more powerviolence and D-Beat influences that we all had, like Cursed and His Hero Is Gone,” explains Will.

And now they’re back swinging, with new drummer Matt Guglielmo (The Acacia Strain) and The Sin Of Human Frailty. It’s a record which emphasises their strengths, its chaotic noisecore a mixture of savagery and precision that recalls peak Dillinger or Converge, but also finds new avenues of heaviness to barrel down, as well as roping in a noisy guest appearance from Heriot's Debbie Gough on the raging Thaw.

“Me and Greg talked a lot about trying to incorporate more extreme stuff into this record," says Will. "We put a lot of time into writing, holed up at the studio, going crazy, we kinda lost our minds pushing stuff further. A lot of the industrial stuff that ended up creeping in was a product of us really enjoying that genre but not seeing it done in grind and hardcore to this extreme.”

Even for a man whose album credits run comfortably into three figures, The Sin Of Human Frailty is a stand-out moment in Will’s career. Just don’t go into it expecting to hear a mash-up of Fit For An Autopsy, Counterparts and Misery Signals in a supergroup style.

“I feel like guys in bands are allowed to be in other bands without having that label! I think the whole purpose of END is to exist in a different space than the music we make with our other projects. I’m flattered that people think we’re ‘super’, but I think we’ve spent a lot of time trying to make END live, and have its own identity.”

The results speak for themselves: wrap your ears around The Sin Of Human Frailty, and prepare for impact.

The Sin Of Human Frailty is released on October 27 via Closed Casket Activities

Read this next:

• Better Lovers: “This is so much more than a side-gig. This is a fire that burns inside of us”
  
• Watch Fit For An Autopsy cause total insanity at The K! Pit in Brooklyn
• Heriot: “The UK scene is so rich with amazing bands – we’re beyond grateful to be part of it”