am a man of many interests. I don’t like anything, but much interests me. You would think that being such a well-rounded, objective individual would be a blessing, but you would be mistaken. It is, in fact, a curse. I will admit that being a renaissance man -- even a hateful one -- does present limitless opportunities to bond with others who share one or more of my vast, varied interests, but my heart is constantly heavy. You see, none of the people I care most about in my life relate to, understand or condone my most passionate pursuits. My male friends refuse to partake in my weekly “chat ovals”, where we gather to discuss our hopes, fears, and dreams. My female friends refuse to take part in orgies. My mother has never offered to take a look at my collection of erotic puzzles. My girlfriend, who I love more than anything, still refuses to understand why I search out pictures of Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon’s wedding, cut out Reese’s face and glue a picture of me in its place. I mean God, she’s all wrong for him .


But one of my biggest disappointments is that I rarely find occasions to share my love of metal with my indie rock friends. They just don’t give it a chance. I don’t even want to begin hypothesizing about why indies shy away from metal like Reese Witherspoon from a gynaecologist (she’s such a skank ), so I’ll simply state that the only metal band I’ve listened to which has impressed indies and metalheads both fully and equally is The End, whose debut album Transfer Trachea Reverberations From Point: False Omniscient was the most passionate, intelligent, excellent metal album of 2001.


It’s no surprise why the band appeals to non-metallers. Despite being brutally heavy and desperately violent, The End rejects many of the death/grind trappings that offend indie (and little girl) ears. There is no Cookie Monster growling; there are no grating shrieks. There are few extended passages of blast beat frenzy or double kick pummelling. There are no guitar solos and the production is neither sludgy nor antiseptic. Most importantly, there is not a shred of uninspired imitation. The End sounds like no other band on earth.


But that doesn’t mean they are indescribable. The End is most definitely metal-core, one of a myriad post-Dillinger Escape Plan bands who are technically brilliant and schizophrenically non-repetitive, but where D.E.P. and their ilk seem to focus on raising eyebrows and wetting pants through bombastic runs and retarded time signatures, the members of The End gear themselves toward closing eyes and crushing hearts by crafting memorable songs that demand repeated listening. Their music is as complex as any you will hear, as clinically precise as the doctor responsible for Reese Witherspoon’s tits; but it is also confounding, idiosyncratic and unsettling, as disturbed and unsteady as the doctor responsible for Reese Witherspoon’s bizarre chin.


While untouchable, it’s not the band’s heaviness or their complexity that converts indies and confuses the ’bangers, it’s their sound: a seamless marriage of D.E.P. gymnastic hardcore and the math-y, passionate density of Rodan. I’m dead serious. For every passage of manic ferocity, there are moments of quiet, unsettling, dissonant clatter. “Opalescence I” and the beginning passages of “Entirety In Infancy” are crooked, jangling art rock that climb to unimaginable emotional peaks before exploding in a frenzy of turgid strangulations. The quiet moments are straight out of Louisville, the riffs grew up in New Jersey. Said riffs are dense and uncharitable, with each guitarist noodling independently, only occasionally doubling each other for maximum crush potential. Underneath the spiralling guitars you will find baffling rhythms, muscle tearing time signatures, and some of the most blistering bass playing ever committed to tape. Roaring over top are raw, frantic vocals. Menacing and indecipherable, they belie the magic of the lyrics: articulate, meandering poems that are beautiful in their malevolent sadness and captivating in their mystery. (“She lives in the peripheral and listens/She kills in the peripheral and glory speaks her name/Glory cuts her face”...“Deep grey white noise, sterile thumbnails float in tepid concrete pools where children drink/Stark white numbers, bitter houseflies float in tepid concrete pools where burdens drink”...“Don’t release starving orchids into the world”.)


Transfer Trachea is startlingly intense, like Ryan Phillippe in The Way of the Gun, but it’s also intelligent and graceful, like Ryan Phillippe in Cruel Intentions . Not one of the thousands of clashing notes, charging beats and percussive screams is needless; not one of the songs is disappointing. From the ripping discord of “Her (Inamorata)” to the crushing climax of “The Asphyxiation of Lisa-Claire” to the paranoid electronic ambience of “For Mankind, Limited Renewal”, the album is simply devoid of a dead or superfluous moment. It is perfectly paced, flawlessly played and strikingly diverse. It is a must-have for anyone who likes passionate music. Ignore all my other metal recommendations (Discordance Axis, Isis, The Crown) if you must, but don’t cheat yourself out of owning this very special album.