Gil Bitton - vocals Zelick - bass Joe Eshkenazi - drums Eli Parker - guitar
"Endo" is a prefix that means "within/inside." In the case of Endo, the ferociously searing band from Miami, Florida, that says it all. Asked to describe the essence and driving force behind their music, singer Gil Bitton instantly sums it up: "A nuclear blast, an explosion of emotion. Total possession." And the experience of listening to Evolve, Endo's debut album on Columbia Records, is just that: immersion in a world of raw, naked feeling pushed to the maximum degree of savage intensity.
Born in Israel and moved to Florida at an early age, Gil Bitton grew up in a house that was saturated in music--from Elvis to 50s R&B to various 60s rock bands to Moroccan folk music. (Both Gil's parents were born in Morocco, moved to Paris, then to Israel, and finally to Miami). He's been determined to make music for as long as he can remember. His father, himself a musician and singer, was an inspiration to him, and gave him his first guitar at the age of 6, and he's been singing and playing ever since. Always an introspective misfit, he dropped out of high school in the 11th grade ("School, for me, was a joke") and devoted himself to his own course of reading and self-growth, single-mindedly pursuing his dream. (He reads obsessively, mostly spiritual-oriented literature, and is right now immersed in the Cabala.)
Along the way, Gil found a job hosting an open-mic night at a Miami cafe called Cool Beans, where he sang nightly with his guitar (a co-host at the time was one Adam Gaynor who later went on to play guitar in Matchbox Twenty). Finally he landed a job singing in the popular Miami Heavy Metal band Above and Beyond, where he met Zelick, a graduate of acting/theater and music school who gave it up to play the bass (Bitton: "I've never seen anyone throw their body, their entire being into an instrument the way he does!").
Bitton and Zelick yielded to a shared compulsion to make their own music and formed Endo 3 years ago. With the addition on drums of Joel Suarez--born in Cuba and raised in South Miami--the sound of Endo began to come together for the album. Following the completion of Evolve, this line-up toured throughout the Spring of 2001 opening for the likes of Sepultura and Static-X. At this point, Suarez departed to pursue other musical endeavors. With a national tour with Stereomud looming, Endo called on drummer Joe Eshkenazi, an old friend who'd played in bands in Miami with Endo's vocalist Gil Bitton and bassist Zelick dating back to age 14. Getting along incredibly well with Eshkenazi from their very first rehearsal together, Endo was ready to take on the world and gained critical kudos for their performances on the "Pain & Suffering" tour of the U.S. with Stereomud (the tour took it's name from Endo's "Suffer" single and Stereomud's "Pain").
Eli Parker is a veteran of local garage bands since his early teens, and a former member of the popular Miami bands "Watson's Army" and "Level Nine" (which he played in with Joel). The addition of his heavy but melodic style helped Endo reach the high levels of intensity they'd been aiming for. In 1999, Endo signed with Concrete Management (Pantera). Having done stints opening for such bands as the Foo Fighters, Nothingface, and Static X, Endo played a blazing set at the SxSW (South By Southwest) Festival and were signed to the Columbia Records' distributed Dv8 label soon thereafter.
Through its 13 songs, Evolve maintains relentless high energy, each track mapping out a terrain of manic dynamics and abrupt sonic schisms. Bitton's gut-wrenching vocals act like psychic signposts along the way: a tortured scream bleeds into a ranted rap litany of personal pain, then shifts into a whispered melody as he seduces the listener into Endo's world of emotional and spiritual extremes. Recorded with an ultra modern, post-industrial attitude, Evolve is full of unexpected shards of sound flying at you from every direction, the immediate impact and knife-edged assault never let up. Evolve was recorded and mixed over the course of a year at Criteria Studios in North Miami.
Rooted by the steamroller grooves of the band's scorching rhythm section, Endo tangles with a full assortment of confrontational styles, from hard-assed funk to militant hardcore. Typically their songs start with Eli Parker's total guitar overload, before breaking down into sparser movements of scratched sounds over stark drums, while Bitton lays down the laws of his torment.
"Malice," the album's first single, manages to veer between hard-edged rage and a neo-industrial/psychedelic groove; listen closer and a resolutely personal angst emerges. Bitton describes the song's subject as "pure paranoia," and it shows: "I can't breathe because I don't wanna breathe no more, I can't see 'cause I don't wanna see at all...In a state of malice, In a state of shame, I wouldn't be so careless if I had you to blame..." The thunderous release of the chorus feels like throwing off a straightjacket, "F*** your perfection!" "Malice" can also be heard on Dracula 2000 - Music From The Motion Picture, the soundtrack to the new Wes Craven-produced millennial vampire film. Endo can also be heard performing a non-Evolve track "Los Angeles Times" with Xzibit on Loud Rocks, the recently-released rock/rap compilation album.
The manic adrenaline rush of "Leave Us Alone" takes Endo's mix of hip-hop, thrash, and techno to new highs of tension and schizophrenic frenzy. The battery of supercharged bass, guitars and slabs of noise--augmented by blasts of kick drum and high-hat--creates a vicious tornado of colliding sounds. This fuels Bitton’s exorcism-in-progress vocals, leading him on to spit out rapped tirades, pushing the sound to new levels of insane intensity. "Suffer" is another anthem to personal pain: "Let it go, what's drowning you is slowly drowning me. You make me suffer to watch your disease. Trapped in yourself, come release your mind. Relax, we'll leave this world behind...You still suffer. Still suffering…." But no one's suffering while the song is playing. The sound itself is a mainline of orchestral guitars and detoxifying electric noise.
Bitton describes how he draws the audience in (whether it's 500 or 5,000) during Endo performances, tearing himself to pieces as he looks directly into their eyes, confronting them one-on-one, possessing them as he's simultaneously possessed by the music himself. But despite the seeming aggression of the vocals and the assault of their sound, Bitton is quick to point out that, "People might thinks it's anger, but it's really a deep emotional intensity that has to be released through the music. This intensity is actually very positive, and our message is positive: personal growth and awakening." This puts them in line with the essence and feel (if not the literal "sound") of the music they admire most: Fugazi, Rage Against The Machine, Suicidal Tendencies, Emo, and on to such seemingly unlikely assorted influences as Run DMC, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, P.J. Harvey, Anthrax, Tool, NIN, and even to Gil's favorite performer, Tori Amos. The latter's influence might seem incongruous to some people, an ironic twist-of-taste for a young male making such "hard" music, until Gil points out, "She's such an amazing songwriter and performer. So powerful! Just her and her piano and so much feel and emotion is generated between her and the audience. You can feel it in your stomach. That's what we want to get at, just in a different way.…"
The name Endo makes perfect sense. Evolve sucks the listener in with a pure sonic force that makes you feel just like it sounds - possessed. Endo is on a mission, pure and simple. That mission is the power of the raw, personal emotion they get (and give) with their music. Everything they do feeds into that. Evolve is an emotional apocalypse, uncompromising and extreme from beginning to end. Each member pushes themselves, each other, and the sound they make together to the breaking point, slamming their way through any obstacles that get in the way of their ultimate goal: Total release.
Source: http://www.endomusic.com/
