It’s one thing to shop around for a record deal and actually find one, quite another to keep the band together long enough to use the “signed” status to full effect. END OF SEPTEMBER guitarist/vocalist/founder Erik Tordsson will vouch for the truth of this statement, having been picked up by Sweden-based Ulterium Records in 2009 based on the strength of a demo recording, only to have their female singer abandon ship before work on the debut album began. This resulted in a two year hiatus as Tordsson regrouped, blessed with the good fortune of the label taking an active part in the search for a new vocalist, which led them to Elin Redin. Certainly not the ideal way to kick off a band’s career, but in the end there was no loss of momentum or musical direction despite the time that went by.
“That's mostly due to the fact that the music was quite a hidden treasure of Erik’s until me and the others came along,” says Redin. “When the band finally came together it was more or less time to finish the recording and work on releasing the album. We needed to aim forward in terms of sound and material, and that comes quite natural now since we've played together for a while and gotten to know each other."
End Of September belongs to the LACUNA COIL / EVANESCENCE / WITHIN TEMPTATION family, putting female vocals up front while deftly avoiding the symphonic metal trap. According to Redin this was by “accident” rather than design.
“When Erik started writing songs for what was to become End of September, he had just left a black metal band and felt the need to work on something more towards his own musical roots,” Redin says of the band’s sound. “Coming from a lot of '70s hard rock like DEEP PURPLE and AC/DC, he wanted to do a modern, melody-based heavy riffs kind of music. He knew he wanted to sing himself, but not front the band - a coordination thing he claims - and thought that a female voice would compliment his. That would be a kind of technical background to our sound, but all of us are into metal and hard rock, and together we cover quite a range of metal, too. I guess one thing we have in common is that we actually haven’t been listening to any of the bands you mentioned, which is weird I guess. But, if people feel the need to put us in the same sentence as these bands, no problem at all. They're huge; why wouldn't we be flattered?”
“It's interesting, this whole thing with putting people in boxes,” she muses. “It could end up being quite of a struggle for a band that winds up in the wrong box if the reviewer or listener hasn't gone further than the preconceptions.”
End Of September is experiencing that struggle first hand now that the debut is out, being set against established female fronted bands by the press and fans of the genre. At no point was the album written with a genre or scene in mind, however, nor a desire to cash in on a trend.
“I think our advantage in this heap of bands that we are trying to breathe beside is that we actually did not have such a good overview of what was out there,” Elin counters. “I know Erik was only doing what he loved when he began writing, putting a format together that he thought worked, not trying to copy anyone else. But, of course, no one is out of range from influences. Sometimes it feels like Erik woke me up from another world about a year ago and asked me if I wanted to sing in his band. I had never even tried singing metal before and it really took some time for me to be convinced that my voice kind of fit. I hadn't heard about many of the bands that started to come up in comparison, and I guess that left out some of the pressure that comes naturally with trying to perform something good that will last.”
“Having said that, I can't really help but wonder about this whole female fronted metal expression. Why is it even a thing? I hadn't even heard about it until our label tagged it on our music video on YouTube. I wonder if the struggle really is harder for us than any male-fronted band? The issue of being too much like another band is always out there, for all of us. Or have unwritten metal conventions given bands with female singers less space to work with? I guess the thing for us is just to keep doing music honestly, and if people will continue liking it there will be enough space for us to reach through the buzz.”
At the very least, the name End Of September offers a sense of what the band has to offer musically. People are more likely to bet on a band headed in an atmospheric or melancholic direction upon hearing it than confuse them with SLAYER or HELLOWEEN.
“Hey, that's just what we usually say when people ask! Well, the last track of the album, ‘Autumn Breaks’ was initially called End Of September. It has the line still in there, 'At the end of September I'll be praying for the spring to come.' When Erik and I were trying to figure this tremendously hard task of naming the band, we kept coming back to that line. We thought, just as you did, that it has a feel to it that resembled our sound."
