Interviews: Endwalker

Today we're sitting down with Endwalker, a progressive metalcore band from Spain. They've been making a name for themselves with their unique sound and they are preparing their first live shows. We'll be talking to them about their band history and future plans. Let's get started and follow the band on their Facebook page!

1. Where did you get the idea for the band name, you planned it or came out just like that?

The meaning of our name is related to how the band was born. We started this project just before the pandemic, and you know, those were bad times for everyone. It even seemed like the end. So we thought it was a good name like we are just starting a band when everything is closed and people are getting sick, other bands are closing, and here we are, in our 30s trying to write and play new music. So that’s it, people who walk and continue at the end, despite everything. We also asked Mike (who designed our logo) to add a point at the beginning of our name as a symbol. That is the story behind the name, but also play some Final Fantasy XIV hahaha.

2. Why did you want to play this genre?

This is a good question! We all really love this genre, metalcore and djent/prog. metal. Hence, we decided to make this music knowing that it is really tough to reach new people. There are a lot of really talented bands out there and it is a niche genre, but it's just what we love to play. We are of course a guitar-centric band, and we wanted to join our creativity in making riffs with the amazing vocals made by Arturo. Yes, we love hard breakdowns and brutal music, but we also love some ambient guitar music like Plini or David Maxim, so label our music as Prog. metal was the perfect choice for us.

3. Did you know each other before the band was formed?

Javi and Dani were already friends and played together in other bands, but we all met just before the pandemic. Javi started the band searching for musicians on social networks. We started to record at Javi’s home a few weeks before we got locked down, so we can say the beginning of the band was really ‘digital’. Now we love each other and we speak everyday like a marriage.

4. Each band member's favorite band?

Javi is very influenced by Erra and Northlane, while Miguel loves to listen and play instrumental prog. His favorite band is Intervals. Arturo’s favorite band and singer is Architects and Sam Carter. Dani also loves everything around prog. metal like Leprous or Tesseract, but he also likes bands of other genres like Dirty Loops. Bastian loves everything we talked about, but he goes crazy with Mike Malyan of Monuments and Matt Halpern of Periphery.

5. Who or what inspires you to write songs?

A song always starts with Javi writing, maybe a riff or a full structure. He can’t stop writing songs even if already has a lot (2º LP is coming already). The next album writing is going really dark, because of the dark times we live in and the events, but we are talking about this first album hahaha. What inspires us and our lyrics are feelings, feelings about confrontation, toxicity with your family or your love, or sometimes yourself. This is what happens most of the time, you experiment something in your life and want to express yourself how you know you can. There is a special song in the album, The Lighthouse, whose lyric was inspired by the film. But at the end this song also talks about feelings.

6. Where was your last gig?

We are a new band so haven’t played live yet. But we are working on scheduling our first show! Let’s see if we can do it!

7. Where would you like to act?

Resurrection Fest in Galicia would be amazing! We believe that there is still a long way to go for that, but we want to believe someday we will be able to play in that festival.

8. Whom would you like to feature with?

Andy from Monuments (let’s keep dreaming…). In Spain and Latin America we have a lot of great bands, we are already working on a song for the next album with Tomas from Blood May Rise. We would also like to work with Diego from Bvrna (we have to talk, Diego).

9. Whom not?

Shakira and Bizarrap, have you checked our guitar cover? It is on Javi's Youtube channel, Aura Fragment, seriously. Maybe you will like it more than the original one.

10. Have any of you ever suffered from stage fright? Any tips for beginners on how to beat that?

Yes, some of us still suffer from that despite we’ve been playing live for years in the past. What we would recommend is, just dont think about the audience or the mistakes you are going to make and have fun. Most of the people in front of you won’t notice or if they do, they will think ‘nah is normal to make some mistakes live, things of the show’. I don’t think anyone believes that you are a robot or you are a bad musician for that. Just enjoy being there with your mates.

11. What bands have inspired you the most?

We are very influenced by melodic prog./djent bands like Erra, Northlane, or Periphery. But also we love metalcore and it is a heavier influence for our singer. A band we can't stop listening to is Kingdom Of Giants. We love what they do and the last album… We’ve listened to that a hundred times.

12. What's the weirdest thing a fan has ever asked you for?

Not a fan, but someone told us we must hide and camouflage the fact that we recorded our own music (without listening to our music yet hahaha) because that is a bad reputation and a no for most listeners. Javier is our producer and has recorded tons of songs, studied at the university and outside of it, and worked many hours on his skills, so we love that we can produce our music and take the time to write and record ourselves without looking at how much money we have left. Music technology is now amazing and is leading to the democratization of music. Do you want to write and produce your own songs in your bedroom? Now everyone can express their art and do it with really high quality, not being stopped by the amount of money you have. In the end, making music is about expressing yourself. Of course, It's great to record in a studio with all the expensive gear, but don’t feel bad if you did it at home, or don’t think it is bad quality because of that. Nowadays mostly everything is made in the box and you don’t need thousands of euros.

13. What do you think of your fans?

We are a new band and we have only a few fans, but we are very happy with them because everybody is saying that they love our new album. And that is great for our motivation to keep going! We are trying to reach new people, but not looking at the numbers on social media or Spotify. We want to try to talk one to one with everyone that is joining us on this journey and share our common love of music. If you listen to us, welcome to the family!

14. What do you think of our site?

You’ve been here for years and the work you’ve done trying to help underground bands is amazing. We love the community you’ve built and the space to discover new bands with the amazing talent around there, unknown. It is really tough to promote your art while everything around you on social media is jokes and funny videos. So finding people like you helping for the sake of music makes us really happy to be here. In the end, it is not a competition for us, it is a community we want to be in, and media like you really serves that purpose.

15. Something to add?

New listeners, give us an opportunity and listen to some of our songs. Yes, you will find hard breakdowns, but also beautiful and ambient sounds that will not disappoint you. Breathing the Core, THANKS for the interview, It was really fun and it helped us a lot! And thank you for giving us the space to talk about our music. Hope to be here again soon!