Defunct Local Band Profile Series: End Of Existence

It's time for this month's Defunct Local Band Profile, and in this month's spotlight feature on a local metal, hard rock, or punk band from the past (randomly selected as ever), we're heading back over a decade for a look at a prominent and partly local metal band featuring many familiar faces. Here's what you should know on them!

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End Of Existence

Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie/Grand Rapids, Michigan

Genre: Epic/Death Metal

Lineup:

Bob "JagerBob" Helsten (Integrated System Of Machines), vocals
Steve Giles (Theatre Of Night), guitar/iPad effects/studio bass
Bryan Kindel, bass
Greg Giles (Theatre Of Night), drums
Craig Harrison (Theatre Of Night), keyboard

Audio/Video: End Of Existence released their self-titled and only album to digital platforms on February 29th, 2012. To this day, the album is still available on Apple Music and Amazon Music for streaming and as an mp3 download, so if you want to hear what the guys cooked up 12 years ago, stream it there! A cover of Johnny Cash's "(Ghost) Riders In The Sky" was among their minimal material not featured on the album. Unfortunately, all of their YouTube videos were made private when drummer Greg Giles rebranded their YouTube channel after his own solo art company Giles Arts, so public videos from their run are limited today. Here's one of their few surviving public videos, for their song "Sun Is Gone"!

Info/Analysis: A studio-only band who were spiritual successors to the mid-late 2000s local metal band Integrated System Of Machines (albeit after some members moved to Grand Rapids), End Of Existence were launched by the Giles brothers in 2009. The band regularly posted and promoted their original material throughout the early 2010s, with their full lineup coming together in August 2011. Despite singer Bob Helsten's departure at the start of 2012, End Of Existence released their album with him on vocals at the end of February, and soon afterwards, they announced plans to find a new vocalist and change their name, encouraging applicants to sing on demos on their Reverbnation page. Nothing publically came of this, and End Of Existence announced their own end of existence in April 2013, with the Giles brothers and Craig shifting focus to their side project, classical metal band Theatre of Night, though Greg left in 2014.

Steve & Craig continue that project to this day, and they re-issued five E.O.E. songs as an instrumental Theatre Of Night EP in 2021, while Greg has also re-posted their material on Giles Arts social media pages. Whether you got into End Of Existence via I.S.O.M. or not, they stood on their own as a suitably heavy and grandiose band with strong musicianship, effective harsh vocals, and a some good atmospheric qualities above the technicality, and it is a shame that they didn't last longer or play live, let alone that their material isn't as available today as it once was. Buy or stream End Of Existence's surviving media above!

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I hope you guys liked this month's Defunct Local Band Profile! This series returns on or around June 10th for a profile of a band that is proof that I randomly select bands for this series. Next month, we'll return to Sault Ontario for a look at local/Ottawa hard rock band Bad Chug, who we just featured on the site in March via an also-randomly picked YouTube Channel Profile. Hopefully when the focus isn't around their videos, things will be fairly distinct three months later, so look for that then, and for more news and notes on the site next week! Thanks everyone!