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jonah matranga: vocals/guitar
norman arenas: guitar
scott winegard: bass guitar
charles walker: drums and percussion contact
www.newendoriginal.com
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Biography
Up until only one month before their first rehearsal, the members
of this band all lived in different states. They booked their
first show—as part of San Francisco’s prestigious Noise Pop Festival—before
the four members of the band had even collectively met in the
same room. And in four months time, the band went from telephone
conversation theory to Washington, D.C.’s Salad Days Studio to
ready their first-ever album. Such is the story behind New End
Original and Thriller, the band’s exceptional debut full-length
for Jade Tree.
Though experiencing viable success as a solo artist under his
Onelinedrawing guise, Jonah Matranga—frontman for the deeply influential
Sacramento-based hard rock band Far—formed New End Original in
late 2000 with a host of friends that he met along the way. Norman
Arenas—guitarist for post-hardcore pioneers Texas is the Reason—began
trading tapes and ideas with Matranga as far back as 1998, when
the pair first conceived the idea of collaborating. Charles Walker,
who spent the better part of the decade playing drums for the
much-loved Indiana troupe Chamberlain, made the next connection
last year when he found himself sitting in for ex-Quicksand bassist
Sergio Vega’s solo project on a UK tour with Onelinedrawing. The
band solidified when Arenas and Walker migrated to the West Coast
in late 2000, shortly followed by New York native and former Texas
is the Reason bassist Scott Winegard, who filled out the band’s
developing line-up.
Together, New End Original’s first record is a big rock blast—a
solid combination of everything that made the members’ previous
outfits so compelling, but carefully relevant and blissfully unguarded
all the same. An exercise in diversity, Thriller is as raw as
it is calculated, shuffling from high-energy hard rock to meticulously
crafted pop songcraft and Velvets-styled melancholy both seamlessly
and unapologetically.
Aside from their much-feted debut at Noise Pop, the band went
on to play a string of West Coast dates with Jets To Brazil in
late April before recording Thriller with former Texas producer
Brian McTernan. The album will be preceded by a mailorder-only
single, a single´s series on Germany´s Defiance Records, a German
and UK jaunt in August, and a full-scale US tour in late September,
climaxing at Jade Tree’s New York City CMJ Showcase.
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