News
Equal Vision Records and Endpoint are excited to announce the Wednesday, November 19 release of Catharsis (Deluxe Edition), a fully remastered version of the influential Louisville, KY hardcore band’s 1992 masterwork. Being released digitally, the album will also be available on double LP vinyl with an etching on the D side and feature 17 tracks, an expansive collection that includes Endpoint’s Idiots EP as well as songs from the split 7" with Sunspring ("Promise"/"Priorities”). Watch the music video and stream the new remastered version of “Caste” from Catharsis (Deluxe Edition) below.
Originally released on Doghouse Records, Catharsis remains Endpoint’s most beloved and influential album. Nearly every song begins with dual-guitar feedback drone before blasting off into an inspired amalgam of thrash metal, post-youth crew heaviness, and DC-inspired melody. Endpoint were clawing their way out of the posturing of late '80s hardcore and the dogma of self-righteous scene subsects while waging a peaceful battle against the rigid expectations and sometimes violent masculine culture that often engulfs young men. Catharsis is an album that documents a very specific moment — it is immediately recognizable as early-’90s hardcore, yet sounds wholly unique and unlike any other band now or then.
In the early 1980s, hardcore punk swept across the globe like a wildfire of youthful energy and angst. In the States, the pyres burned brightest in the highest population enclaves, particularly the major coastal cities. Miraculously, through tattered pages of fanzines, tales shared by friends, and crackling records and mixtapes, hardcore expanded beyond its metropolitan birthing grounds and into the corners of unassuming towns like Louisville, Kentucky.
Louisville was disconnected from the pulse of culture when, in 1987, a handful of high school skaters and miscreants formed a band called Deathwatch. Deathwatch quickly morphed into Endpoint and, over the next six years, became the flagship Louisville hardcore band of the era. They are quite possibly the essential Louisville Hardcore band. While there were handfuls of hardcore bands in Louisville before Endpoint and many in the decades that followed, during their short existence, they defined a sound, perspective, and tangible sense of community that spread across the Midwest, throughout the continent, and across the oceans.
Throughout the band’s 1992 album, Catharsis, Endpoint’s guitarists Duncan Barlow and Chad Castetter unleash a barrage of catchy riffs, plucked harmonics, single-note melodies, and palm-muted gallops. Opening salvo “Caste” leads with an all-time great guitar riff, quickly augmented by bassist Kyle Noltemeyer and drummer Lee Fetzer’s relentless pummeling. Fetzer’s drumming gives Catharsis a particularly unique feel — full of unhinged youthful energy while allowing the guitar riffs to direct the propulsion of the songs. Barlow and Castetter fill the album with endless dynamic and melodic shifts; the songs turn on a dime from high-speed thrash to half-time hooks.
Endpoint singer and lyricist Rob Pennington became a de facto leader in a shift in interpersonal dynamics and socio-political messaging in hardcore bands in the Midwest in the early '90s. Taking a cue from heart-on-sleeve Dischord bands Embrace and Rites of Spring, Pennington’s lyrics on Catharsis charted the growth of a young person into adulthood, taking stock of the pains of childhood and the tribulations of a sensitive heart in a sometimes heartless world. His lyrics to some songs read like the journals of a plaintive young soul, while others battle the status quo of class structure. A seismic revolution in hardcore subject matter and lyrical content, Endpoint’s "Days After" was a sincere attempt to battle rape culture by directly reacting to a female friend’s account of her trauma.
The beauty of being a band in Louisville, isolated from cultural meccas and established tastemakers — particularly in a pre-internet era — is that creativity and sensitivity can thrive without the trappings of pretension or hopes for stardom. Endpoint’s music and message made massive waves and greatly impacted many young people who were searching for connection and trying to find a way to navigate life with both the fire of righteous anger and the care of thoughtful consideration. Catharsis resonates today as both a critical junction in hardcore and a purely thrilling collection of songs.
