Dialectics, as defined by Hegel and further described in terms of material dialectics by Marx, views ideas and objects as contradictions to each other. The contradictions can be understood as relationships, in a sense, how one thing relates to another thing is a great part of how a given thing is defined, sort of a practical dualism. We define things in accordance with how they relate to ourselves, to nature, to what they are used for, to how they impact our lives. A fruit, say an apple, for instance, is a fruit because it meets certain parameters we have decided define fruit. It is an apple, because it meets certain parameters that other fruits do not. Therefore, an apple is in contradiction to a banana or an orange, which in turn are not the same as an onion or a hammer or a quasar. There is more to it, and maybe I didn’t describe it well, but it applies to the themes of Baltimore hardcore crew End It‘s debut album, Wrong Side Of Heaven.
I first heard End It when their 2022 EP, Unpleasant Living, came out. My cadre of punk friends and coworkers at the time were hyped about it, and they introduced me to the band. Unpleasant Living drew from old-school hardcore punk, but with a renewed sense of modern fury, channeling tones and sounds re-popularized by early Comeback Kid, Militarie Gun, and SOUL GLO, and based off of one EP, I was holding End It in the highest of regards. Since then, the band has been recognized for their energetic live shows, released a handful of singles, and even wound up on the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 remake with their song “New Wage Slavery”, solidifying them into the hallowed legacy of one of the best video game soundtracks of all time. Oh, and their music videos are incredible. For all of this success, End It really only had about 40 minutes total of music. Now, Wrong Side Of Heaven boosts that total recorded music time to just over an hour.
Despite its speed and short run time, Wrong Side Of Heaven packs a weighty punch of ferocious hardcore and intense, thoughtful lyricism. Most of the songs are barn burners, ripping through riffs and occasional breakdowns like a band that doesn’t have time to fuck around, no filler, no artsy transitions, just hardcore fucking punk rock. The most extraneous song is the opening title track, which wastes little time diving into the energy and sound End It has been cultivating, loaded with riffs primed to make you move while delivering the least lyrics on the album. It is a great opener that serves to hype up the energy that follows. “Pale Horse” bursts its way through the wall of death with sharp as nails riffs, frantic drums, and dual vocal leads that hit so hard you barely notice when the song slows down a hair. This white-knuckle pace makes up the vast majority of the album with those occasional moments of texture like the breakdowns in “Cloutbusting” that reset the pacing, making a sub-one-minute track punch way above its weight class.
Longer tracks like “Life Sublime” let End It flex their songwriting chops, adding solos and letting the lyrical narrative build and unfold. This is similar on “Lament”, which brings us back to the notion of dialectics and contradiction. Both of these songs place the narrator at odds with others, a common enough theme in hardcore where thinking for yourself and non-conformity are essential parts of the scene, but these songs and “Used 2 Be” start to tie some thoughts together. “Life Sublime” is about a lone-wolf kind of hitman, loyal only to himself and content with that. “Lament” takes accountability for poor judgements and behaviors, seeking to correct missteps. “Used 2 Be” on the other hand, takes shots at someone clinging onto the hardcore/leftist scene, despite exhibiting fakeness. ‘Respectability has only gotten us so far/I’m tired of the fake shit/show me who you are, motherfucker,’ lead singer Akil Godsey screams, bringing to mind the weird space of well-intentioned people who play respectability and identity politics which can often times be misguided and distracting from the deeper issues of material conditions and ongoing colonialism. This creates strife and contradiction in any leftist circle, and End It are done with the bullshit. Hiding behind performative language is just as much a waste of time as nitpicking respectability. Shit is hitting the fan, and every day it sprays all over. Quit bickering about semantics and purity tests; we have fucking work to do. The chief contradiction is the working class vs the owning class, and we need to start acting like it.
Hardcore punk is defined by revolutionary politics, and End It aren’t beating around the bush about it. Songs like “Anti-Colonial” and “Empire’s Demise” make that very clear. If you don’t find leftist politics to be appealing, you probably shouldn’t have read this far. This music isn’t for you. However, Wrong Side Of Heaven isn’t all Molotov cocktails and community organizing. In a surprise move, End It have included the closest thing to a pop-punk track I could imagine from them on “Could You Love Me?” Godsey was in choir, and can sing very well for someone who mostly screams and shouts. He is known for bursting into Frank Sinatra songs and the like during live shows, and channels The Smoking Popes and Van Halen‘s David Lee Roth era on this cut, crooning melodies about love and longing. At first, this threw me for a loop, but as I have kept listening to this record, it has grown on me to the point that it gets stuck in my head. “Could You Love Me?” is a catchy, tender side of End It that scratches the surface of what they are capable of as songwriters outside of hardcore’s usual restraints. Of course, this is preceded by a 20-second song called “Hookworm” about the parasitic nature of greedy capitalists and is followed by the anthemic “Empire’s Demise,” so don’t be mislead into thinking they’ve gone soft or too commercial.
End It have lived up to and surpassed the promise of their singles and Unpleasant Living EP on Wrong Side Of Heaven, delivering what may be the best hardcore album of the year, chock full of floor-cracking riffs and lyrics that can and should crumble the foundations of America’s broken empire. They have come with rage. They have come with heart. They have come with fierce devotion to their local scene and the humanity of the downtrodden, the outcasts, and oppressed people everywhere. If there is ever a silver lining to the onset of fascist oligarchy as the United States struggles to maintain supremacy through physical and economic violence, if there is ever something cathartic and invigorating for those of us with compassion in the face of absurd cruelty, it is in albums like this that demand attention and could easily soundtrack [redacted]. Fuck shit up, fam. The new kings of hardcore are just getting started.
