Interview

Gil Bitton of Endo
March 14, 2001
2:00 PM

Interviewed by Natalie Hawk

"Endo" is a prefix that means "within/inside." It's a fitting name for a band that reaches way back into the darkest depths of raw emotion and exposes those feelings with every note of their music. 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."

Their new album, Evolve, explores pain, emotion, and redemption, often all at once, contained within an unending assault of sound. It's a beautiful catharsis.

I recently caught up with Gil while the band was on a tour bus en route to a gig. Here's what he had to say.

So, where are you now?
We're on our way to St. Petersburg (Florida).

You guys formed in 1999. How did you finally get your break?
We played a festival, South by Southwest, and there were a bunch of labels there, a bunch of people from MCA and Interscope. We played a great show, and got attacked after the show. It was after that show that things started to happen. Actually, we got management a year before that, so they were shopping us around, getting the word out. And then it was all about, you know, playing for the people, getting with the suits, and letting them decide. We just played for ourselves, had a great show, and it all turned out pretty good.

You've toured on and off with Nothingface for a while. I actually caught one of their shows about a month ago.
Yeah, we love those guys, they're awesome. They're great guys, we love touring with them. And now our album is coming out on March 20, and it's just really exciting, going on the road. We love performing, going on the stage, and being on the road. It's total freedom. It's great out here, doing what we love to do basically, and it's a great thing, doing what you love to do.

Do you like that more than recording?
I love recording, I love the whole aspect of music, being on the road, performing. Being on stage is like being at home, you know, just the energy onstage, the energy we send out, the energy that's brought back to us. The response we're getting on tour is totally amazing so we're just happy to be out here performing. That's what we live for, actually!

The new CD is really heavy on distortion.
The heavy distortion obviously comes from the guitar, and my bass player uses heavy distortion on the bass. He has a really original attack so it sounds really in your face... it's a very intense sound. That's where a lot of the raw energy comes from -- a lot of the harmonics, a lot of the intense sound, just a lot of really innovative stuff. The songs that we have now, apart from Evolve, are totally more fluid, mentally, spiritually, and melodically. We can't wait for this record to come out. I mean, we've been sitting on this record for two years, it's finally coming out, it's kind of old for us but it's new to everyone else.

You list Pantera as one of your main influences...
Definitely. Pantera's an amazing band. I grew up on a lot of heavy metal, like we all did, industrial, Ministry, etcetera. Really a whole array of things... classical, rap, anything. I think that translates in our music. There's a different feel for every song. It's kind of cool.

There's a lot of emotion into your music, but you manage to stay pretty positive. Are your songs autobiographical, or are they more generalized?
I write about a lot of personal issues. Evolve was a whole road to self-discovery. I've had a lot of problems with having panic attacks, anxiety and paranoia in general, and a lot of that came as the lyrics evolved. The individual listener is going to interpret that as they want to, but I was going through a process, it was definitely a positive one, and I hope everyone gets that. I mean, people think "anger" when it comes to our music. Initially when you get onstage, you think anger, but our music is definitely more emotional. It's about release. And I think any release is positive. I think any band that goes out there and uses music as a release is such a positive thing. Even if it's intense anger, we need that. That's why it's great when the kids come out. We meet a lot of them at the shows, and they're very positive and they appreciate what we do. There's no drug in the world more powerful than having a kid come up and say, "Great show." It's amazing.

On the cover of Evolve, it looks like pi is tattooed on your hand.
I'm into a lot of mathematics, chaos theory, how nature meets science in general, just the philosophy of everything being [explained in] numbers, I think the body of science is just the searching for knowledge and power, you know. Mathematics is a big part of that. And pi, 3.1415, well... mathematicians for a long time were totally baffled by it. I think it's very interesting. People are looking for patterns of that number in certain things. Also, I've seen the movie about fifty times.

Your new album comes out next week. What's in the future for the band?
Just basically a lot of touring, making albums hopefully for a very long time, just doing what we love. As soon as we don't love it anymore is as soon as we're not here.

Well, I thank you for your time...
What did you say your name was?

Natalie.
That's my sister's name! If we ever play up north, maybe we could hang out!

Definitely!

When not writing about the hardest music imaginable, Natalie Hawk flexes her wits as a mechanical engineer. She admits to being smitten by Gil Bitton at his first mention of pi. Endo's latest album, Evolve, is out now on Columbia. They're on tour now.