The End – Andrew Hercules
Posted on July 10, 2007 at 8:00 am by admin
Way Too Loud: What’s your name, and what do you do?
Andrew Hercules: I’m Andrew Hercules. I play guitar and some other random shit.
WTL: There were some big changes on “Elementary” -
Andrew: Big changes?! Big like how?! (Laughs) I guess I should let you finish the question first!
WTL: Do you plan on keeping the core sound you started with on your EP (“Transfer Trachea Reverberations From Point: False Omniscient”) and your first full-length “Within Dividia”, or is the future not set in stone?
Andrew: No! It would be lame if it was set in stone! What fun would that be? What we do definitely changes as we change as people. I can’t predict that. I’m 27 now, and when I as 20, I never thought I’d feel the way about life that I do now at this age. Things will change, and we’ll grow as personalities in this band grow.
I still feel, no matter what, it’s all on the same path. It’s pretty linear in the way that we’ve evolved, and some steps are just more drastic than others. Out bad has always tried to keep things interesting, and that’s always been the core focus of our band, to keep things fresh and exciting.
What can you expect in the future? Surprises. That’s all I can say really. If we knew where we wee headed, we’d have our next 2 albums written. We’re always surprised by what we put out. We planned to put out an album like “Elementary” perhaps, but we never knew what “Elementary” would be. Once it was done, we were all surprised.
Because we’re in a band, we have the whole democratic process thing. 5 different minds together turned out something totally new, than anyone on their own could foresee.
WTL: Were the changes natural or intentional?
Andrew: Both! It was inevitable perhaps, maybe that makes it natural. It was what’s inside of us, it wasn’t forced. So, yes, I guess it was natural. It wasn’t really something awkward or weird for us. It wasn’t like we got together and said “hey, we’re going to change our sound!”. We just made some songs that we like, which we’ve always done. This is what The End was feeling at the time of “Elementary”.
WTL: I know a lot of people who first hear The End compare you to Dillinger Escape Plan, and I know I did myself when I first heard you. After a few listens though, I found you a lot more unique. Would you say that Dillinger Escape Plan is an influence, or did they more inspire you to play?
Andrew: I’m a fan of Dillinger Escape Plan, and Ben, and all those guys. I have been a fan since near the inception of that band. To say that we take inspiration from Dillinger Escape Plan would be accurate, because have inspiration from thousands of bands, that’s why we make music.
To put Dillinger Escape Plan as our singular influence would be totally inaccurate, I’ve always felt. We sit there and laugh. We’ll sit down with them, and Liam will say “you guys sound nothing like us”, but we’re heavy and we have guitars and drums, and there was a point in music journalism where anything that was heavy, and maybe had an odd time signature, and that was loud was compared to Dillinger Escape Plan, it didn’t matter who you were, for about 3 or 4 years I think. It’s a testament to how good Dllinger Escape Plan is as a band, but at the same time, all these bands got lumped into it. Half of those bands didn’t sound like Dillinger Escape Plan at all, and some of them were Dillinger Escape Plan rip-offs, and a lot of them were bands that were pushing the envelope in the genre of tech, which really isn’t tech, it’s just that rock ‘n roll and hard rock doesn’t just have to be 4/4.
That’s the whole thing about tech. It was a genuine interest for young aspiring musicians to just do something different, and a lot of those bands instantly got lumped in with Dillinger Escape Plan. I’m sure they were a catalyst for a lot of that, I’m not going to deny that. The comparison never really bothered us. We realized it was just a trend.
WTL: The expansion in sound seems to have expanded your tours. Before “Elementary”, it seemed that you often toured with a specific set of bands.
Andrew: It’ cool, because there’s such a diverse musical element in the band, that we can tour with bands that have little bits and pieces of what we’re doing. This tour with It Dies Today and From Autumn To Ashes is different than the type of bands that we usually run with. It’s cool, because it comes down to who’s watching the show, and not who’s playing the show.
It works out great for us because we get exposed to kids that normally wouldn’t listen to us, that wouldn’t normally pick up a tech metal or whatever CD. When we expose ourselves to those kinds of kids, we find that they like it too. After this we tour with Cephalic Carnage and Between The Buried And Me, which goes back a bit to more what we’re like. It’s fun for us to play different scenes and see different kids. We’re playing in Toronto, which we’ve played hundreds of times, but I know this time we probably won’t recognize most of the faces . It’s great to play in your home town and play to new people. It’s working out really well.
WTL: What bands got you playing in the first place?
Andrew: Really, if you want to break it down and get straight to the point, Nirvana, Guns And Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, the stuff I grew up on in the 90’s. That’s when you’re the most impressionable as an artist or a musician, and that stuff sticks with you for life. That’s what I was rocking to when I was 13 or 14, and what inspired me to play guitar. That’s the cause, and then I discovered other things along the way, more metallic influences.
The classic rock bands, alternative rock bands that did it, and managed to be creative, and different, but still be successful, because that’s the best shit ever. What’s more of a success in music than that? Creatively and business wise, which is the whole package.
WTL: How do you keep yourselves entertained on the road?
Andrew: I have a laptop, so I watch a lot of porno, and play a lot of solitaire. We all do our things, books, games, driving, music. We’ve actually been listening to a lot of Alan Crosses “A History Of Music” lately on our iPods. That’s the current van fixation.
Really though, there’s no way to keep entertained on the road. When you get somewhere, you fucking rot. It’s funny how tedious tasks that you don’t have to do on tour become part of your routine. Something like changing a t-shirt gives you sometime to do for a little while your waiting. A lot of that stuff becomes a lot more major than you would think, because it’s all you can do to keep busy.
WTL: Are there any movies you lie to watch?
Andrew: I watch movies all the time. I’m a huge horror fan! I just saw 28 Weeks Later, which I’ve been dying to see. I played the new Transformers on Wii, which was ok, it wasn’t anything spectacular, but it’s Transformers, so it’s fun enough. You get to break shit in it, which is cool.
WTL: Since you mentioned horror movie, myself and some friends like a lot of horror movies at home, and we play this game called “Choose Your Own Horror Movie Death”…
Andrew: I’ve never done anything like that before, but I think something I would choose would pay homage to Fulchi. Lucio Fulchi has a lot of good deaths. I’m not a huge fan of all his movies, some of them are made ok, and some of them are very poorly made, but he has some really good deaths, and there’s 2 that are a toss up. 1 of them is in Zombie, and this girl has her head pulled by a zombie through a door, and a shard of wood goes right into her eye. It’s slowed down, really over-dramatic. The splinter of wood goes right into her eye, and you can actually see the eyeball split open. That was one of the best deaths I’ve ever seen.
Then, I think in City Of The Living Dead? There’s a tarantula killing scene where these tarantulas eat this girls face. They’re biting and nipping, and they’re obviously puppets, and they eat her face to death. I think it’s amazing because tarantulas can’t do that, but if they could, they would! Tarantula face eating? Pretty amazing.
WTL: What have you been reading?
Andrew: I’m into horror fiction. I recently read Frankenstein by Mary Shelly. I read some Lovecraft. The last story I read was Shadow Over Kinsmouth. It’s about this town in New England are different, and the protagonist goes to explore the town, and he finds their history. They worship this god of the sea, Dagon, and there’s all these weird churches and jewelry. He doesn’t understand it, but he goes there, and they start hunting him down. Most of the story is just him escaping the town. He finally leaves and goes home only to realize that his family is from there, and he keeps dreaming about this place. He realizes he belongs there and goes back to live there. He lives in the sea like a fish person.
I love those stories, especially the classics. Poe is one of my favourites, and Lovecraft is obviously inspired by him. I love the ideas, and the creativity. I love the dark and the gloom of humanity taken into consideration. That kind of writing is set up so well, especially because in their minds it wasn’t a cheesy horror book. It was high literature in their minds.
WTL: It’s funny that you mention Lovecraft, because he’s been an inspiration to a lot of people in metal.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s great! As I’ve read him, I see the references. The most obvious is probably the story “The Call Of Kthulu”. Kthulu is in many of his stories, just look at Cradle Of Filth, and Metallica.
So much of the metal and goth world reveres all this fiction, and horror kind of stuff. Between Poe and Lovecraft, you have most of the cliches, and Hitchcock down the road as well to summarize the movie element. You have most of the cliches that have been exploited in that culture for a long time. They’ve been replicated, much like Shakespeare and soap operas. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that Poe was an influence on our lyrics. It’s not obvious, but it’s definitely there. You learn something from the greats!
WTL: I was going to mention Metallica and Cradle Of Filth about Lovecraft, but you stole that away… certainly Nile and Morbid Angel take their lyrical influence from some of that as well, like the Necronomicon.
Andrew: Actually, speaking of the Necronomicon, they changed that in some of the Evil Dead movies for some reason. Some of the newer re-release have the word “Necronomicon” changed for some reason. I don’t know why…
WTL: Who would you really like to tour with?
Andrew: Dillinger Escape Plan man! It’s the most fun to tour with your friends bands, you know? I could name every big rock band, but the most fun would be to tour with our bros again, which should be happening soon! We’ll head out with A Life Once Lost again, also our friends. Emperor, I love them, but I don’t know if that would be a good tour, although it would be amazing to see those guys every night.
WTL: Emperor really a good, different choice to make.
Andrew: Oh yeah! Prometheus to me is one of the pinnacles of heavy music. It transcends the genre.
WTL: A lot of people wouldn’t expect a member of The End to maybe name a black metal band.
Andrew: I don’t look at genre. It just comes down to how someone wants to express themselves on tape. The basic raw music elements transcend all borders.
WTL: Any Canadian bands, or Quebec metal bands, because I’m a sucker for Quebec metal.
Andrew: It’s crazy when you think of how much brutal progressive shit has come out of Quebec. I should’ve added Ion Dissonance to the tour list, because they’re really close friends. They do some things that have never been done before in music, which is not something I say lightly… Beneath The Massacre, Despised Icon, Neuraxis, Negativa, Gorguts… am I missing any bros here? I probably will, and I’ll feel like such an idiot… Fuck The Facts kind of lives in Quebec, they live near the french side of Ottawa, so I’ll throw them in there too. Cryptopsy was a huge influence on this band, one of our top 3 influences.
WTL: Didn’t you tour with them?
Andrew: We played a couple of shows. They were really cool to us, and really encouraging too. We really look up to them, and they said we’re really wicked, that we should keep doing it, that we shouldn’t listen to anybody because we know what we’re doing, and they were so positive. Then they brought us out to some Quebec dates, right when Lord Worm had returned.
WTL: I think I read an interview where Flo mentioned really liking The End.
Andrew: Really? Well, I mention Flo as a dude that I like! It’s great when bands you idolize are actually being personal and talking to you. When bands like that say that, I guess it means we’re for real.
I just want them to know, perhaps on of them is listening, that we heeded your words, that we won’t forget, and we’ll take it as far as it can go!
The Official The End Website
The End at MySpace
The End at Relapse Records
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