Fans of metal and melody are taking notice of Rebirth to Ends from Orono, Maine. Jonathan Allen, Justin Hadley, James Hadley, and Luke Abbott may not be overwhelmed with the reception their brand of industrial/metal receives in a local scene dominated by hardcore, but the quartet pushes forward spreading word of rock yet-to-come. The effect of their in-your-face vocals twisting their way through heavy-hitting guitar riffs without losing focus or direction is a testament to the group's song-writing skills. Guitarists Jonathan and James took a moment to speak with BoyBand 625 about the group's past, present, future, and all the fun guitar toys along the way.

BoyBand 625: How did you guys get together?

Jonathan: We all go to school at the university here [Orono]. Basically I'm the oldest and right before I graduated I met this girl and started dating her. I'd always been into music but never got a solid band together, and she knew a bunch of guys she went to high school with and said they're all really good. So they messaged me on MySpace and that was pretty much it.

BB: And that's the same line-up as today then, right?

Jonathan: Yeah, that's pretty much the crash-course version of the story. We went through a lot of crap trying to get bass players and stuff. It basically amounted to a bunch of people telling us they could play and then showing up not knowing the names of the strings. We really couldn't deal with that. James and Justin knew Luke and told me he was really, really good. He was orignally going to be our temp bassist but then he ended up being so good that it worked out, and we said we should all just do this professionally.

BB: Yeah, it sounds like you guys know what you're doing musically, so knowing the string names is probably going to be failry important.

James: Yeah, we really couldn't handle the guy who I would tell, "You're out of tune."

Jonathan: "Don't play the B string." And he says "okay" and then like every note he plucks is on the B string. It's like come on, man.

BB: That's funny. So who would you guys point to as your musical influences? I can definitely hear sort of 90's metal approach, but you guys all seem to be doing some other things that sound a little more modern.

Jonathan: Right now all that old stuff pretty much is very Trivium and Bullet for My Valentine influenced but I had written all that stuff before I met them. It was just like my solo project 'cause I didnt have a band.

James: But we've gotten him into some slightly harder metal. Once we got all the rest of the members of the band, Justin and Luke, we were all heavily influenced by much heavier bands like Soilwork , In Flames, Meshuggah, and all these really heavy death metal bands. We're not changing our sound completely but we still have that melodicness to our music but we've definitely gotten heavier since the three of us have joined the band.

BB: You guys definitely have that melodic style in your vocals and it carries over into your guitar work. What equipment did you use to go about creating that heavy guitar sound that also fits well with melody?

Jonathan: Well the recording was just something I did in my bedroom. So I mean that was pretty much....I mean overall it sounded not bad but in the grand scheme of things that recording is terrible. Basically it was just an Alesis drum machine, and I used a guitar and bass with EMG pickups just running them through a Digitech effects board. Just direct lined all the guitars.

BB: What about the recordings you've been doing more recently?

Jonathan: Luke is really good producer. We've been using Logic Pro. We still use my Digitech board to get the signal in, but that's pretty much where it stops. Luke does all of the emulation and modeling with Logic Pro, so the recording is pretty much based on whatever the program's capabilities are. We'll just come up with different model combinations that we like. We really don't use anything on the recording that we use live other than our guitars.

BB: Yeah, that sounds like a pretty popular approach these days. Record everything as dry as possible and then apply the effect later if you need them.

Jonathan: We pretty much treat recording and live as completely separate entities.

BB: I know you guys are big fans of lot of gear companies out there. Have you landed any endorsements or anything yet?

James: We don't have any endorsements as of yet. Right now I know Luke is in the process of trying to get me endorsements from Madison amps. We're trying to get an Avatar sponsor for Jon. They don't do amp heads, but we're trying to get Avatar speakers for Jon and Madison amps for me. Right now I play an ESP F-200. I got it for like 160 bucks - unbelievable deal. It's about ten years old and has active EMG HZ pickups on it, because it's before they made the 81/85 pickups. So it's a really unique guitar, and I like it a lot. I also play a Gibson Les Paul which is probably my favorite guitar that I own. Its really beat to hell and looks like crap but it plays and sounds better than any other guitar I've ever played.

Jonathan: The joke in the band is that I'm impulsive when buying. I wouldn't say "impulsive", because that has a negative connotation - I'd say I'm a connoisseur of guitar gear. I like to have a lot of stuff. I have two guitars, three amps, and an ass-load of effects. In my original setup I had a Marshall 1960A with one of the newer generation Valvestate heads. Somebody ended up stealing that head, so basically yadda-yadda-yadda...I ended up getting an Ibanez, the new Tone Blaster series 'cause I'm really into solid-state heads. So I bought a Tone Blaster 150, and Luke turned me on to Avatar speaker cabinets. They're this small company out in California that makes cabinets. So I got rid of my Marshall 1960A and had them make me two custom 2x12's. One has vintage 30s in it, and the other has G12T-75's...whatever are in Marshall cabs. So I've got that nice blend for metal tone. Currently I use those two Avatar cabinets and I just bought myself a Line 6 Spider Valve. So now I've got valve tone, but its got all the built-in Line 6 modeling. So I have all kinds of effects at my disposal along with that warm tube sound.

BB: Do you split your signal at all between your assorted amps and cabs?

Jonathan: I haven't done it yet, but I've really been interested in doing it, because Dino Cazares from Divine Heresy and Fear Factory is one of my favorite guitar players of all time, and I really like his tone on the Divine Heresy disc. He said to get that tone he combined a Peavey 5150, a Marshall Valvestate, and a Marshall MG. I don't really think too highly of the MG and I don't like Peavey (just my personal preference) but I always wanted to try the same setup and have the combination of the Valvestate, the solid-state, and a tube amp. So one of these days I am gonna run them all together with the two cabinets and see what happens, but for right now because I have to do vocals, it's way too complicated for me to have to deal with really complex rigs and worry about setting stuff up quickly. So for live applications right now I just use two Avatars and the Line 6 head.

BB: In keeping it simple, do you also try to minimize the number of effects pedals you drag up on stage?

Jonathan: That's the other joke. We call it the "bomb case", because it looks like a terrorist's suitcase. Boss makes that pedal board that hold six pedals and powers all of them. When I was using the solid state and Valvestate heads that had no built-in effects I would carry around one of those Boss pedal boards, and it had six pedals in it. Right now it's just too busy on stage when I'm doing vocals to like "dance" on the pedals and get the combinations right. So I stopped using that. Now the Line 6 has all those same effects, and I have an infinite number of channels. So whenever I want a combination of effects I just hit the button once, and all of my presets are right there. It makes my life a lot easier to use the Line 6 head.

James: I'm more of a purist when it comes to effects and stuff. Jon doesn't like Peavey. I am the exact opposite. I love Peavey. Luke has a 5150...the first time I ever played a Peavey was when I played his. Then I went out to one of the local guitar shops and I tried a Peavey XXX - and it has that warm, full tube sound and just cuts right through. It can have a low end. Not quite so much as the 5150, but the XXX is definitely my favorite amp. And I just bought a used matching cabinet, so right now I have a Peavey XXX half-stack, and that's pretty much all I use. As far as effects go I don't quite have as many as Jon. I really only use a Danelectro echo pedal. It switches between echo and delay, and I only use the delay setting. Then I use a Dunlop Crybaby wah pedal. That's all I use for effects.

BB: That sounds like a good, clean setup.

James: He likes solid state amps, and I'm more for the warm full tube sound.

BB: So does somebody have the role of lead guitar then?

James: Generally Jon does the lead vocals as well. We switch off between lead and rhythm, but primarily I do most of the lead in the band.

BB: What do you guys think of the music scene up there in Orono?

Jonathan: That question always gets asked - terrible. There's no other word to describe it.

James: I have a slightly not-so-harsh way to put it. The music scene isn't absolutely terrible. It's hard to spread anywhere. We've been in Orono for about a year now, and granted we've done well in the past year but we haven't really gotten out of the area. There's not really anywhere to go - especially for a melodic metal band like us. People in Maine have a completely different aspect of what's metal and what's not. Like Godsmack to them is metal, and to us metal is like Soilwork and In Flames. The Maine scene is very hardcore-driven and hardcore-oriented, which is good for them. We've played a hardcore show before and the reaction was...

Jonathan: ...less than stellar.

BB: What else do you guys have planned for Rebirth to Ends in the near and distant future. Tours? Recording?

Jonathan: Right now we have another national show. Our first national show we opened for Mushroomhead, and that went really well. We're gonna be opening up for Diecast next month. In the meantime we're gonna be recording more of our new stuff and practicing that. Then this summer we're gonna be going on a small like one-week tour in New England with one of our good friend's band. We haven't actually done a formal tour yet, and they're really experienced. So they offered to go with us, and it'll be just a really good way to get our feet wet with going out touring.

BB: Sounds like you've a lot coming up then. Any final thoughts you'd like to share with our readers?

Jonathan: As far as gear goes the one thing I want to throw in is that the ultimate secret weapon I recommend for every guitar player...actually no, not the Boss Noise Suppressor...although yeah if you play guitar for like $100 it pays for itself. But the ultimate secret weapon is a BBE Sonic Maximizer. Luke got me into those. They're only like $200 to get the rackmount version and you can buy a footswtich version for like one-hundred. It's the most valuable piece of gear that I've ever had in my library. It just totally cleans up your sound. If you amp sounds mediocre your amp will sound good, and if your amp sounds good it will sound spectacular if you buy a Sonic Maximizer. So that's my plug for BBE.

BB: Totally. They're definitely subtle and you might not notice it a whole lot when you turn it on, but once you turn it off....

Jonathan: Yeah, it sounds terrible once you turn it off. I try to run it as much as possible.

James: I don't have any secret weapons. I just turn my amp on, and that's it.

Jonathan: He turns up louder than me and then plays fast.

You can check out the latest from the band on their MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/rebirthtoends.