Rend

There's a connection running through the four members of Austin heavy metal/thrash band Rend that becomes quickly apparent once they take the stage and maneuver into the stop on a dime tempo changes of a song like "Nine Crippled Years." The slightest slip up would derail a song with such force and aggression but the members of Rend nail it every time, without so much as a glance at each other to lock in their timing. They can feel each other without looking. Ever since day one, being a member of Rend has meant being locked into a sense of where the music is going, almost before it was written.
It's been that way since 2002, when founding members Charlie Carpenter (guitar/vocals) and Byron Gilmore (drums) met to jam in an east Austin practice space where they found common ground right off the bat and began creating finished songs almost immediately.
"Other bands I’ve been in we’ve had to work a lot harder to get anywhere near what we had right away. Me and Charlie have always had that connection and I don’t know why it is but when we started playing it’s just always been that way and I’m amazed how we go from full-on thrash to these songs that have a groove running through them," Gilmore said.
Said Carpenter; “I came home from a trip in New Zealand and saw a classified ad from Byron for him as a drummer influenced by Metallica and Machinehead and Sepultura, and that was perfect. He wasn’t afraid to explore with me. We knew in the very beginning that this was real. He does things with the double-kick drum and polyrhythms that gets into Fear Factory territory, but was into the idea of a singer-songwriter in a metal band, and that you need a background and that rhythm, and we had it at the very beginning.”
Since those early days Rend has solidified its lineup with guitarist Shawn Young and bassist Adrian Garcia, to form a versatile, powerful combo that combines the speed assault of early Metallica and Anthrax with the heavy power of Pantera and Sepultura, among others.
Young - who helped the band leap forward with its songwriting upon joining Rend in 2006 and brings a precise, intricate style on guitar to compliment Carpenter’s more powerful, open leanings - said that “versatility is the key to the band’s appeal because it gives fans elements of the best periods and styles of metal in songs that have their own character and voice.” Like classic metal guitar duos such as Metallica’s James Hettfield and Kirk Hammett, or Sepultura’s Max Cavalera and Andreas Kisser, Carpenter and Young bring distinct, powerful sounds to their songs.

“A song like ‘Bloodthrone’ took a while because it’s very technical at the beginning but then gets very open and melodic and it took some time to get the second half of that one figured out, but what sets us apart is how we bring lots of different elements from different eras of metal into our songs. We’re all open to new ideas and as a band we’re way past the point of trying to stick to a certain thing or kind of sound.”
With Garcia on board since 2008 holding down the low end on bass and adding melodic backing vocals and other songwriting contributions, Rend has established itself as one of the most creative bands in the Austin and central Texas metal community, and scene veterans are glad to have them back on stages such as The Dirty Dog, Trophy’s and Headhunters.
“I’ve always said Rend were a straightforward southern thrash band and they could stand toe to toe with almost any touring act on the scene today,” said Chuck Loesch, Austin’s pre-eminent metal expert and host of the weekly “No Control” metal radio show on 101X FM “Their sound accommodates so many of the metal masters into it, and that is what I enjoy the most. They have been a favorite of mine for years.”
As a member of the Austin-based Texas Metal Collective - which features roughly a dozen heavy metal bands who trade gigs and assist each with recording and other business-side functions of band life like recording and promotion - Rend expects to make 2012 its best year yet. Plans to record some of roughly a dozen completed songs as a follow-up to its debut EP - Serpentine Conquest, playing almost weekly and securing support spots on bills for touring metal bands (Goatwhore and Divine Heresy have shared the stage with Rend previously) and touring throughout south Texas , where metal fans have embraced its powerful, versatile sound through the years.
“We want this to be the year when we get in a van for a week or two at a time and get out there, because we have something that people really want to hear,” Carpenter said. “People who see us like that we can do so many different things, that we’ll blast you, but then we’ll drop down and get real.”