Before he made a name playing drums in Alkaline Trio, Derek Grant went by the name of Reaper and sang for a band called Dead End. He says on his MySpace page:
For a period of about three years I answered only to the name Reaper. My hair style changed slightly, but I still retained all of the b-movie mentality of those early days (I ask myself now, has it ever gone away?) The tapes I had made found their way into the hands of some older musicians who wanted to start a band, and so Dead End was born….I continued to write new material and when we could, we would borrow devices to record. Thus, documenting the rise of Reaper—through puberty and beyond (you can actually here my voice change throughout these recordings.) After a few short years of playing parties, roller skating rinks, and punk clubs the band drifted apart.
![](https://bigdrumthump.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/derek-grant-reaper.jpeg)
He recently found some of those old Dead End tunes and has made them available for free download here. The MySpace entry also includes artwork and a short synopsis of each song.
[Update 2022: The MySpace page and download link are no longer active.]