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So exclaims vocalist Jeff Wallace on the band's anthem "Malevolent Nation." This pretty much sums up the brazen philosophy and attitude of the Ocean County, NJ based industrial/hard rock quintet End Of An Era. "We don't want people to buy into the whole Laguna Beach (ie: TV show) and American Idol and all that bullshit that is so prevalent in American society these days," confesses keyboardist Steve Blair, reinstating, "We want to take people away from their television and computer and make them think for themselves." Indeed, End Of An Era isn't your average candy-assed metal band.

The band came together nearly 5 years ago when Blair and Wallace teamed up to write music, and not long after they recruited guitarist Jeff Brogan, bassist Justin Mazyk and drummer Jeff Spags who were all performing in different local bands in the Ocean County, NJ area at the time. Blair admits, "The music scene here is pretty fertile at the moment, New Jersey lies between NY and Philly so there's always tons of places to play but as a result you have like 3 million bands competing for good gigs."

Relentlessly pounding away at local hard-rock venues certainly paid off as End Of An Era soon found themselves performing their first major festival in front of over 60,000 screaming rock fans at the Bamboozle Music Festival at Giant Stadium in their NJ hometown. And the band has even found success in foreign shores performing at such prestige festivals as the Machinaria Rock Fest in Sao Paulo, Brazil in May of 2008 alongside major cutting edge metal/punk bands such as The Misfits, Sepultura, Biohazard, Suicidal Tendencies, and MxPx. And throughout the summer months of 2009 the band will be playing other prominent music festivals such as The Northeast Music Fest and North Coast Music Fest, both 3-day rock fests where the band will be performing all three days. Drummer Jeff Spags claims, "Performing at these festivals really works well for this band and the response has been tremendous so far. We'd rather play one show in front of a few thousand people rather than several shows in front of a couple hundred people so we obviously try to get on as many festivals as possible." This has proven to be a shrewd and savvy strategy that has certainly worked in the band's favor, as Blair explains, "Our philosophy is to simply get our music out to the people in whatever way possible and the live shows, particularly the festivals, really seem to work best for us. Blair continues, "The Internet is a great tool but it has become so saturated these days with literally millions of bands trying to promote their music that it makes it very difficult to break through. We come from the old-school mentality of taking our live show to as many places as we can. Not to mention the live shows have given us a substantial outlet to sell our CDs and merchandise."

And speaking of the live performance, Steve adds, "The live show is our forte, we try to bring out the theatrical aspect as much as possible and really try to give the audience their moneys worth."

As far as the music is concerned, all five members come from different musical backgrounds ranging from industrial to punk to all-out heavy metal which all come together to create a unique modern-industrial metallic framework that defines the End Of An Era sound. And as for the lyrics, Blair conveys, "Many of the tracks lyrically come from the perspective of a person on the outside looking in at the world around." Blair continues, "It's a real 'Me against the world' attitude… It's about NOT buying into any trends and just being yourself and having your own beliefs." This is exemplified in songs such as "Exorcise" and "Black Sun Rising."