This is the new Rock project from Jonah (Far, One Line Drawing), Norm and Scott (Texas is the Reason) and Charlie (Chamberlain). These 4 guys ended up in the same US coast by some coincidence and formed this band in 2000. In August 2001 they first released a CDS "Lukewarm" (which is also the opening track here) and only 2 months later this debut full-length appeared. Now to be honest I must tell you that I didn't listen to any of their earlier bands before (although their names sound very familiar), so don't expect me to compare New End Original with any of them. It's a hard thing anyway to relate them to any band, since it's a quite diverse album; going from mellow stuff to hard rocking songs. Actually I don't even know in what musical category I would situate them. The first 2 songs belong in the Alkaline Trio and somewhat harder emo-pop-punk corner, while a lot of the other songs could be labeled as belonging to the Deep elm Records stable with intense and heartfelt easy-listening songs. Yet, a song like "Hostage" includes a part that is as fierce as a top-notch punk release, to be followed by an accoustic song with only a voice and piano, reminiscent of Dashboard Confessional. So as I wrote before a mixture of varying tunes. But listening through the album it's the emotions that get the upper hand and personally I'd like to hear more musical light-footed virtuosity and less dragging songs that keep going on (as most songs have a playtime between 4 and 8 minutes). I have the bad characteristic of getting bored pretty soon. Luckely they manage to shake me awake a number of times with some tempo changes ("Weary Progress") and songs like "#1 Defender" that, although very mellow, have enough Get Up Kids-alike magic to make it a worthwile album to add to my collection. I'm a bit worried though that this band sounds a bit too diverse and modestly complicated to appeal to the mass consumer.