By the End of Tonight

In the realm of popular music, it seems that the greatest mainstream success is achieved by those bands that are most deeply entrenched in normalcy. While the Nickelbacks and Linkin Parks of the world are selling out arenas with their derivative schlock, there are thousands upon thousands of groundbreaking bands that break up without ever being heard. By the End of Tonight were about as unconventional as a rock outfit could be, which is probably the reason that they spent the entirety of their brief career in relative obscurity.

BTEOT formed in Alvin, TX in 2003 as a four-piece instrumental group, consisting of Stefan Mach and Josh Smith on guitars, James Templeton on bass, and Jeff Wilson on drums. Wilson opted to play a toddler's drum set in lieu of a standard kit, most likely for the extremely tight "pop" that he was able to get out of the tiny snare drum. They produced their first full length themselves, entitled ...In a Letter to the Sandbox. This album was a sloppy, no-holds-barred exercise in spazz-core. Not only does each song sound completely different, but each song sounds different on a measure-to-measure basis. The opening track, "We Are The Cure For Blinking Lights!" misleads the listener with all 4 members screaming over machine gun-blast drums. After this one-minute track, no vocals are heard for the rest of the album.

In 2004 , the band sent their album to Temporary Residence Limited, home of such post-rock bands as Explosions in the Sky and Mono. To this day, BTEOT stand as the only band to be signed by the label based solely on a demo. Temporary Residence picked their four favorite songs from ...In a Letter to the Sandbox, and released them as the Fireworks on Ice EP. In 2005, they went into the studio to record their second LP, A Tribute to Tigers. The band recorded this album live, in order to capture the sheer chaos of their live show. Despite the fact that there were only 5 songs clocking in at just under a half hour, this was truly their landmark record. "Setting Sail In April" spans over 10 different genres in just under 6 minutes, and concludes with a fakeout ending, where one guitar plays with the volume all the way down, only to have the full band come in at full blast for the last 4 seconds.

In 2006, BTEOT released 4 EPs - a solo project by each member of the band, in the tradition of KISS and the Melvins. Just after recording his Imaginary EP, Josh Smith left the band and was replaced by Brett Taylor. The band went on to record a final split EP with fellow experimentalists Tera Melos, entitled Complex Full of Phantoms. These songs were somewhat of a departure from their earlier work, featuring much heavier riffs, more cohesive structures, and higher quality studio production. This split won critical praise from many obscure music publications, but still failed to reach even a moderate level of commercial success. In early 2008, Wilson left the band, leading the band on a year-long search for a new drummer. At the beginning of this year, the band announced on their MySpace page that they had disbanded.

Check out a live performance of "Setting Sail In April" from A Tribute to Tigers here: