Review: End It – Wrong Side of Heaven

August 28, 2025

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Wrong Side of Heaven is not simply a long-awaited full-length debut—it is a baptism in sound, a trial by fire within the pit, where sweat, chaos, and conscience collide. Entering Salad Days Studio in early 2025 with renowned producer Brian McTernan (Turnstile, Snapcase, Hot Water Music), End It—Akil Godsey (vocals), Chris Gonzalez (drums), Ray Lee (guitar), and Patrick Martin (bass)—arrived with only a handful of demos. Over two months of real-time writing and recording, the band forged fifteen songs from the heart of thrash, hardcore, and soul, centered on “spreading awareness of the change that’s coming to Americans, personal growth, and maintaining the ethics and integrity of hardcore.” What emerged is a debut that harnesses the raw energy of their EPs, now distilled into a magnum opus of moral clarity, communal accountability, and relentless survival.

The record opens like a bell of war, the gang vocals of “Wrong Side of Heaven” detonating in the chest, igniting the pit with ritualistic force. Gonzalez’s snare hits land like warning shots, Lee’s opening riff slicing with scalpel precision, and Martin’s bass grounding the chaos beneath Godsey’s charismatic yells. “Pale Horse,” the first single, keeps the momentum unrelenting: rapid-fire gallops and call-and-response gang vocals spin the pit into a vortex of kinetic intensity, while Godsey’s soulful delivery in the closing lines hints at the weight behind the velocity.

“Life Sublime” expands this ethos, weaving old-school aggression with melodic gang shouts and incisive drum fills, each instrument asserting its individuality without fracturing the cohesion.
https://flatspotrecords.bandcamp.com/track/life-sublime
“Optical Delusions” sharpens into confrontation: a blistering solo cuts through jagged rhythms as Godsey delivers one of the record’s most incisive indictments:

“Image is your everything / Your mindset is toxic / I was searching for community / You’re only here for the optics.”

If these singles map the outer edges of rage, “Could You Love Me?” carves the record’s most vulnerable center. An impeccable cover of Maximum Penalty’s 1996 hardcore classic, it transforms the pit into a cathedral of fragility, where Godsey’s soulful voice trembles over delicate counter-melodies. For once, the violence subsides, and the crowd is left to sway in uneasy stillness—a reminder that survival demands openness as much as force.

The surrounding songs deepen the album’s arc. “Exploiter (SYBAU)” alternates between upbeat hardcore and sudden, stripped-back interludes, letting Godsey’s vocals dominate in stark relief. “Billion Dollar Question” juxtaposes jaunty groove riffs with crushing breakdowns, his rap-inflected flow cutting through with brutal clarity:

“I ain’t worried ’bout the war / Cause that’s a losing battle / The damage has been done / I’m bringing slaughter to the cattle.”

“Cloutbusting” and “Anti-Colonial” fold in groove-laden chugs and yelly-rap cadences, proving the pit is not merely physical exertion but a battleground of ethics. Short bursts like “Hookworm” compress the chaos into twenty uncompromising seconds, while “Empire’s Demise” closes the record with apocalyptic scale—chugging riffs, gang vocals, piercing leads, and drum fills that cascade like collapsing scaffolding.

Instrumental technique drives the record’s emotional force. Lee’s guitar work shifts seamlessly from downpicking to blazing solos to sharp, palm-muted chugs. Gonzalez’s drumming alternates between breakneck d-beats, syncopated fills, and sudden cymbal flourishes that mark both transitions and ruptures. Martin’s bass underpins it all, his low-end tone more than ballast—it is the spine of the record, locking groove and velocity into a single body. Breakdowns are not filler; they are ethical pauses, breaths that allow reflection amid violence. Every snare hit, every choke, every downstroke feels intentional, each one calibrated to channel chaos into meaning.

Wrong Side of Heaven thrives on dualities: speed and space, fury and reflection, individual conscience and communal energy. The pit itself becomes an allegory, a crucible where each gang vocal and shouted lyric is both a declaration of endurance and an invitation to accountability. Godsey’s proclamations ring out as rallying cries and moral reckonings, echoing in the bones long after the set ends.

End It have harnessed their debut full-length to craft a record that is as exacting as it is visceral. Following EPs that became cornerstones of Baltimore hardcore, Wrong Side of Heaven positions the band as a formidable voice in modern hardcore—a debut destined to endure, a work that asserts itself as an album-of-the-year contender and a future classic in the genre’s canon. In just over twenty-two minutes, End It map the pit, stage a ritual of moral and musical rigor, and leave both body and conscience indelibly marked.