Hot off of last year’s Time Will Take Us All, Entheos made a quick return with a new EP An End to Everything. Continuing their evolution as a band (who have been functioning as a two-piece), it’s another strong example of how they can take extreme metal elements and make it something that sounds unique and powerful. They don’t just stick to one thing, but incorporate a multitude of elements to make a more interesting yet still cohesive product. We spoke with vocalist Chaney Crabb about how the two work together, the benefits of having a more unique sound, experiences with social media and their KoperCrabb podcast, and even a bit of make-up talk in this expansive chat.
Dead Rhetoric: First off, congrats on your recent wedding! Going off of that, what’s it been like in terms of just working between Navene [Koperweis] and yourself over the years? Do you feel you can just push each other to the next level each time?
Chaney Crabb: Absolutely! I think we are really good at doing that, because we are honest with each other. It works really well in a music environment, being honest with each other. At the end of the day, we both just want what is best for the thing we are working on together. We both have strong artistic opinions on stuff. We push each other constantly. We both are good at taking criticism from the other person. It’s never harmful, it’s always constructive and I think that if you learn to work in that way with someone, it can be such a fruitful relationship. It has pushed us to write the best stuff we have written together. I’m really proud of it.
Dead Rhetoric: At one point, Entheos had more band members. It’s just basically the two of you at this point. Do you feel that lets you really explore things more completely?
Crabb: Yeah! Don’t get me wrong, I have always loved being in a band. I grew up being in full 4 or 5 person bands, and when we started this band, we had an idealistic image of what it could be with four people being democratic about everything. I think that naturally as things progressed, people didn’t tour anymore and had to leave, Navene and I became very obviously the two people at the head of the band. Navene is capable of writing everything on guitar and writing the music. I am capable of doing everything vocally. So we don’t really need to operate with more people.
Sometimes, when you do have that many people in a band, the artistic image becomes really convoluted. There might be one person in charge but they have to run things by five different people who are all different. Sometimes there is such a thing as too many cooks in the kitchen. Because our band is now stripped down to two people…Evan Brewer does play bass on our stuff but he doesn’t write our material. He doesn’t have a hand in writing the material – he just comes in and plays bass on it. Because it’s just the two of us, there’s nothing we don’t want. There’s nothing that we can’t fully stand behind. I have found that sometimes when you are working with a whole group of people, some of the stuff, you look at and say, “I don’t know why we did that.” But they wanted it, you know? Because of that, it’s a very pure band.
Dead Rhetoric: It does seem like the two of you have really honed in on what Entheos is, which means that it’s more uncompromising.
Crabb: Absolutely. I was kind of saying this, but over time it just eventually became obvious that it would be hard for other people to fully feel like they are putting their whole artistic, creative self into the band. When Navene and I come home from tour, we are still talking about the band all the time. We live together and we are together 24 hours a day. When other people go home, they are with their significant others. They are doing other shit. Their significant other doesn’t care what we do with the band.
So if you are another person in our band, you might feel unfulfilled, because Navene and I write very quickly. Navene is very prolific in the way he writes music. We were just talking about what we want to do for our next album is write like 50 songs and sift through those. Kind of like what a country or pop artist would do. I think it’s really hard for other people to keep up with that. Because of that, we don’t have a sense of unfulfilled creativity in our band, and I really enjoy that.
Dead Rhetoric: How did the As I Lay Dying tour go over? It seems like you were in a good position to win over new fans since it’s not a crowd you might not necessarily hit.
Crabb: Absolutely, it was like you are saying. A lot of times you go on tour and every single person there knows about you. Sometimes you go on a tour and there are a few people that know about you, but not really [overall]. We kind of had that experience on the As I Lay Dying tour. Because of that, it opened us up to a whole new crowd of people. To me, As I Lay Dying is a legacy metal act. They’ve been around for 25 years, they have hit records over a long span of time.
There’s a huge fanbase, and a bunch of fans who might not even be in tune with what’s going on in metal now. They are a more generalized metal audience. That was fucking incredible to go out and play our music in front of those people and gain a lot of new fans. Tim was having me come out and do a guest vocal on stage everything with As I Lay Dying. That really helped people find out about us. It was an incredible tour!
Dead Rhetoric: How do you feel that An End to Everything exemplifies where Entheos is at in 2024?
Crabb: I think that it perfectly encompasses what we wanted it to do. We wanted it to be an EP of singles. We did a concept record before this that ran together as a whole piece. Right now as a band, what we want to be doing is writing good songs. It’s a huge goal we have in writing an album right now that we will probably put out next year. That was the goal with this EP. We want to get better as songwriters. I think this EP is very much us doing that.
It really represents stepping into this place where we want to be really good songwriters and to be able to encompass all of the influences into one thing. I think this is a very good step in that direction. We are incorporating a lot more singing, rock and grunge and doom elements, along with the metal. More and more we are just becoming the band we want to be.
Dead Rhetoric: It’s interesting that you mention it, as there seems to be more of that shift. When you first started the band, there was more of a technical slant to it and it seems like the band has been blossoming this whole time. Do you feel that fans have stayed along for the ride, in that regard? I know it’s not always the case for some bands.
Crabb: Totally, I do. I don’t know why that has happened. I don’t know why people have stuck around for the ride. I see that happen all the time! Bands add singing and people are like, “Fuck this, I’m never listening to this band again!” For some reason, I think that we attracted a lot of people who have eclectic taste, from the beginning. We did have tech elements, but we never fully fit in with tech. We never fully fit in on a tour that we were on. That’s a good thing, I’m not mad about it. I like being a unique band. I think that, because of that, the people who were attracted to us in the first place are attracted to that kind of music and are attracted to bands that do that.
For me, my favorite bands are ones that do not easily get defined by one genre. They don’t stick to one thing. The coolest part about a band is seeing what they do over time and how they expand their sound. For some reason, we attracted fans who are also into that, and watching bands do that. It’s also because we never came out and were like, “We’re a tech death band” or “We’re a deathcore band.” We have always been weird…we are like a rock band, I don’t know what we are. We’re a metal band, just listen to us. We have been lucky to attract people that like the same thing.
Dead Rhetoric: It might be helpful that when you don’t fit on a tour, like the As I Lay Dying one, it makes it a lot easier to pull people in because you can go all over the place with different bands.
Crabb: I’ve noticed that the people we pull in, they are the kind of people we are talking about. They are in it for the long haul. They aren’t just interested in what is hot right now and sounding like that. They are music lovers and they love bands and live music, and hearing bands experiment. So I totally agree with that. Sticking out is a good thing.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ve shared a lot of personal information, particularly about your accident, and this EP is also a personal one. Do you find it challenging to be so forward with some of these things?
Crabb: I think when I was younger I did, yeah for sure. The older that I get, the more I think it’s important. I think people resonate with that stuff. I enjoy when people share personal information. It helps us all realize that we aren’t all really alone in this world, and a lot of people go through a lot of similar things.
When I was younger, I was more guarded. It’s probably why I don’t really resonate with the early lyrics of Entheos very much. I feel like I was trying to be someone who I really wasn’t. I was trying to do a more tech thing, and I don’t really give a shit about that stuff. I want personal lyrics, and I realized that over time. That I liked lyrics like that and wanted to resonate with the lyrics. So the older I get the less I give a shit. I’m only here for a certain amount of time. It’s whatever. I like putting that stuff out there now.
Dead Rhetoric: In the last year or two, there’s a bunch of stuff from Entheos in my social media feed, from playthroughs to one-takes to other things. Do you feel you’ve gotten a good grasp on how to use social media to your advantage as a band?
Crabb: I think I do, but social media changes so constantly. Every time I post one of those videos I’m like, “This is going to be the one that doesn’t go viral” or whatever [laughs]. I’m always expecting it to be whatever. Yesterday I had a good grasp on it, but today do I have a good grasp? I have no idea, but I’m along for the ride and I try to learn as much as possible. I do think social media has been a great tool in growing our band. I think it can be a great tool for a lot of people, and you don’t have to adhere to what everyone else is doing.
A lot of people, I think, think that you have to be this cringy type persona to have it help your band on the internet, but I don’t see it that way. I think if you just put out honest stuff that is you, people will gravitate towards that. Social media is so wild. It’s the wild west out there so I don’t know!
Dead Rhetoric: It’s something that a number of bands have talked about lately in some way or another. They mention the cringy bit, but I think it’s cool that you have found a way to make it work for yourself that feels genuine.
Crabb: Thank you! I’m surprised by that. I’m happy but tt’s surreal to me that it has taken off for me and my band. I did vocal one-takes 10 years ago and no one gave a shit back then. It’s not on the internet for me to think I was going to get a lot of exposure from it. It’s cool that it has worked out that way. Like you were saying, if you go into it more genuinely and don’t expect much out of it, it can be a great thing.
Dead Rhetoric: You and Navene have also been doing your own podcast for a while. What do you feel you’ve gained by doing the KoperCrabb podcast in terms of the scene or even how podcasting works?
Crabb: Oh my god, there has been so much gain. I don’t know – I feel like I am pretty up to date with what is going on with the scene, so it’s a way to talk about it. It’s been a cool way to just build a community, and build a stronger community around our band and talk about things that I don’t know if people really know, like what it means to be a touring musician and do this for a living. It’s cool to be able to peel back the curtain for some people. When you do that, it makes it seem easier for some people to achieve, if that makes sense.
When you are so withdrawn from something, and you only see artists out there getting their art in Decibel magazine or their album out there, you don’t really know. It doesn’t seem achievable. It seems so far from you. Like in the olden days, when people had to go to Hollywood to be famous as actors or actresses. As a midwesterner, that seems really far away. But when you peel back the curtain and say, talk about how I got here or how we got signed or how our band gets booked…all of those things. When you talk about that, it helps people see that it’s something they can achieve as well.
So it’s been cool to do that, and it’s been cool to just have conversations with our friends, who we sometimes only see for 5-10 minutes on tour and we never really have this extensive conversation about all of this stuff with them. It’s just like a whole new way to experience being in a band, from my side. It’s cool! Now we know our friends, and we can be friends with people who are fans of our band. It’s super sick!
Dead Rhetoric: It also makes it more meaningful for those people involved as well. You dig in and get the fans that are like, “they are kind of cool” and you lock them in.
Crabb: That happens to me all the time with comedy podcasts. I’m a huge fan of people who I don’t even think their comedy is that funny. It’s because of their podcast.
Dead Rhetoric: To go in a very different direction, in terms of the way your eye shadow goes and your eye gems, what has your evolution been with make-up. It almost seems like an element of your persona at this point.
Crabb: I have literally been wearing cat eye eyeliner since I was thirteen. It’s just always been the way that I have liked wearing make-up. Its like when you put make-up on and you are like, that’s how I want to present myself. That’s how I feel beautiful. So I guess it’s been an ever-evolving thing. I have gotten way better at doing my make-up over the years. With adding eye gems and stuff, it’s just shit that I see. With the eye gems, total shout out to my friend Sheena, because she had a certain kind of eye gem on and I was kinda vibing it and decided I was going to wear them now.
It’s a part of me. I don’t know if it’s a persona, but this is just Chaney. It’s how I go to the bar. This is how I went to my sister in law’s baby shower last weekend. So it’s me. It’s how I like to present myself. I really like to experiment with that stuff. I’m really into EDM culture, it’s really cool. When they go to festivals and stuff, it’s different than metal. They are really dressing the fuck up and being a part…I have gone to gay clubs since I was like 17 years old. That’s like, where I grew up. Everyone there is very bodacious and drag queens and it’s like glam is a part of the theme. All of that is very much a part of who I am as a person.
Dead Rhetoric: I kind of feel like metal could use a bit more of that, like a sparkle almost.
Crabb: I totally agree with that. I’m happy to be one of the people to bring it. It’s just something I have used, being so mystical. I think people are beautiful when they feel like they can express themselves in ways that are on their body. That’s an artistic representation of yourself. I always love when I see even older people, who want to do it up. They are glam! I think it represents a part of you that you might not be able to get across otherwise. This is who I am.
Dead Rhetoric: In my own full disclosure, coming out as transgender a few years back, I can completely get that sentiment.
Crabb: Now you can be yourself! This is who I fucking am! I love being able to be like, “This is who I am.” I feel like a lot of people lose that spark over time. They get inundated in the real world and think, “I don’t want to do that,” “I will look stupid like that,” and it’s like, this life is about being able to be the person that you are. Be who you want to be and do it unapologetically! That’s what I’m all about!
Dead Rhetoric: What do you hope for the metal scene as it moves forward?
Crabb: I hope that the metal scene moves away and embraces being unique. That it moves away from this homogenization that I see happening in subsects of metal right now. A lot of bands are chasing what another band is doing. A lot of bands don’t have any unique flavor to their thing. Full disclosure, Navene and I were listening, and I’m not going to say what subgenre it was, but we listened to like 20 bands in the same subgenre like two weeks ago and I couldn’t tell the bands apart. There was no standout thing where I was like, “Holy shit, this band is killing it in a different way!”
So I just want that to continue to be embraced. That we are all unique and that we are doing things differently than other people. That we don’t need to follow certain formulas to get views on TikTok or become big bands. There are a few fucking gems out there, and I was just talking about SeeYouSpaceCowboy earlier in a different interview. I think they are absolutely killing it. I wouldn’t even necessarily be drawn into the genre that they play but I just think they are amazing. I like unique bands and unique voices, and instrumentalists where it’s not all of their artistic ability being scrubbed out by quantization and production techniques to homogenize the bands. I want to see bands experimenting and enjoying being themselves.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s next for Entheos?
Crabb: We are going to be touring a lot next year. We have a tour that we will be announcing a tour soon that is going to be in the southern American states, places that I have never heard of, like McAllen, Texas. But I’m going there [laughs]. Stuff that we wouldn’t hit on a normal A or B market tour. So that, and like I said, we are going to start recording an album at the beginning of December. We are doing the podcast and keeping it rolling over here. We can’t stop, we are obsessed with making music!
Photo by Lizzy Livingston