Since the release of their acclaimed debut album "All Hail the Void" in 2012, Milwaukee’s four-piece Enabler have been constantly on and off the road, bringing their powerful and filthy crust-metal sound across two continents and who knows how many countries.
Guitarist and vocalist, Jeffrey Lohrber, recently took a moment out of his busy schedule to share with Scratch the Surface some of his road stories and the band’s future recording plans. Here’s what he had to say.

First things first, how are things in the Enabler camp at the moment? You have been playing shows with Early Graves and Weekend Nachos lately and before that you had an extensive European tour with Rotten Sound and Martyrdod. How did that go?

"The shows have been great for the most part. I've been playing in bands now for about 13-14 years, since I was a little kid, and touring for about 10-11 years. A good chunk of that time was spent playing or touring with bands that I did not personally enjoy. Don't get me wrong, there are some great people in some of these bands, but the music just sucks in my opinion. I love that with Enabler we play with primarily bands that I enjoy personally and musically. Rotten Sound and Martyrdod are both just killer bands, we've actually toured with Martyrdod twice now and they are like family. Weekend Nachos and Early Graves are both also just awesome bands and great people. We also just played a few shows with Dead in the Dirt who are fucking awesome. Just sharing the stage with people that you have mutual respect for makes all the difference in the world when it comes to touring."

Ever since the band has released their debut album "All Hail the Void" in 2012, you have been constantly on tour, driving across the U.S. and playing everywhere. Where are you going to get the energy to keep this relentless pace?

"Honestly, I don't think we've been as busy as you think. We all have jobs and have a home life that we have to maintain. We're not the band who is on tour 10 months out of the year. We're playing about 80 - 100 shows a year, and we try to make the shows we play count. We try to make sure that we're playing shows that we would want to pay to go to. I've had friends that have gone through the 250 shows a year lifestyle, and for the most part it got them nowhere. They weren't able to maintain their bands due to such heavy touring and they exhausted their fans by coming through every city in the states 6 times a year."

What's the weirdest thing that's happened to you on tour that wouldn't be incriminating to share?

"Our former bassist once was blacked out drunk and started jerking off while laying next to me and yelling his girlfriends name, this was after he passed out on the phone with her. I ran to the other side of the room. He then pissed himself and woke up in the van the next morning with no pants on. Maybe there's a reason he's out of the band and Amanda joined..."

What are your favourite and least favourite parts of touring, and being in stuck in a van with other guys for days in a row?

"Sitting in a van with your best friends to play shows every night all around the world is just straight up fun. I love live performance more than anything else in life. So I guess you could say I was born for this lifestyle. My least favorite thing is how exhausting the lifestyle can get, and how hard it is to recover when you get home. We're usually straight back at work the day we come home from tour, and our bosses all think we're on fucking vacation or something!"

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"I personally love live performance more than anything else in life."

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I noticed there’s an Australian tour schedule for July, are you looking forward to this particular trek? I believe it’s your first time playing there.

"Absolutely. Being able to travel the world doing what I love most is an absolute honor."

As mentioned above, you released your debut full-length, "All Hail the Void" a year ago and recently you have issued a new EP called “Shift of Redemption”. Why release an EP now, did you want to get some older material out before writing another record?

"The recording session for AHTV took about 18 days of tracking, and the producer / guitarist at the time Greg Thomas took about 3 months to edit and mix this record. I was very impatient, and also although AHTV is a record that I am 100% proud of, it came out a little more "produced" than I would have liked. The 4 songs for the Shift EP were written in the time that I was just waiting to hear AHTV, I was very frustrated at not hearing any kind of finalized product and basically having all the work tracking I had just done taken out of my hands. The idea was to put out some short and fast that sounded like a band playing in your living room where as AHTV is just a little to clean for my taste."

Regarding new material, I read that you recently recorded a bunch of new songs, are those destined for the next album? If so, what can we expect from this upcoming new work?

"We just demoed out 3 new songs with our friend Cole from the band The Crinn. The idea was to just get in the studio with our new drummer and lay down some new tracks to see how everything was sounding. We're very happy with everything and these songs will be released on various upcoming splits 7". I am knee deep in the dead with new songs right now. I really love all of the new songs, the AC/DC and Amebix influences are at an all time high, but it's hidden in there and the songs are very pissed and very melodic. I think if AHTV was Enabler's stamp in the heavy music world, this next record will make sure you won't forget that stamp. The plan right now is to track in November. Stay tuned..."

More info at: http://enablerband.com
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Since the release of their self-titled debut album in 2002 through Prank Records, Georgia’s Kylesa have been progressing continuously, slowly distancing themselves from their hardcore-punk roots and embracing a more progressive and psychedelic sound. So you won’t be surprised if I told you that the new album ‘Ultraviolet’ is another step towards that direction. Their previous effort ‘Spiral Shadow’ released three years ago really marked a new era for this ever-evolving band, pushing their previously reserved elements of dark psychedelia and indie-rock to the fore of their punk-sludge combustion and this new album continues in the same vein, but reveals an even greater emphasis on those psychedelic, goth and indie-rock textures.
Kylesa have toned down the volume and intensity of their sludge monolithic heaviness and worked hard to craft a structured and layered piece of work deeply immersed in a cathartic and dark atmosphere. Even some of the rocking tunes like ‘Unspoken’ or the heavy ‘Vulture’s Landing’ have a haunting, sombre ambience to them.
Vocally, Kylesa also demonstrate a noteworthy evolution with guitarist Laura Pleasents gaining a greater role in this department, singing in a more dreamlike tone like a spiritual voice guiding you to all things cosmic and dreamy.
It is clear that a lot of effort has been put into the composition of the new songs, as each one of them show a high number of different levels and layers. You get trippy noises, electronic swirls and lulling ambient sounds. It's clearly an album for a headphones listening experience rather than an album that you can crank up on a noisy and smoky club.

Band info: www.facebook.com/KYLESAmusic
Label info: www.season-of-mist.com

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Since forming in 1998, Norwegian death metal veterans Blood Red Throne have seen more members getting in and out of the band than a brothel-house in Amsterdam. Surprisingly, despite the numerous line-up changes they have always preserved their identity and stick to their roots, churning out six albums of classic, Florida-styled brutal death metal. Their seventh and self-titled effort offers more of the same, great death metal riffs, powerful double kick-drums and aggressive growls, all delivered with a vicious, brutal intensity. These guys prove their skill at handling both cranked-up, fast death assaults and slower grooves just fine here and they even spice things up by adding some epic, melodic guitar solos like in ‘Torturewhore’ for instance.
There’s no denying that Blood Red Throne are competent musicians and know exactly what they’re doing, but unfortunately, this new effort simply lacks originality and offers the listeners nothing new. Sure it’s a competent and solid death album with some killer riffs that kick ass, but ultimately it fails to stick in our heads. There's not much more that can be said about it, it’s simply more of what they've always done. It’ll impress at first listens and then it will be filed away and sadly forgotten.

Band info: www.facebook.com/BloodRedThroneOfficial
Label info: www.sevared.com

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An ear-catching clarion call at the start of ‘Talion’ signals the return of Sweden’s Agrimonia three years on from their last LP ‘Host of the Winged’. Now signed to Southern Lord for this their third full-length, ‘Rites of Separation’, Agrimonia—consisting of members of At the Gates, Martyrdöd and Skitsystem—have produced their best album right at the time that the band’s exposure is at its highest.
‘Talion’ is a fine indication of what the rest of this multi-limbed record has in store: expansive post metal split wide open and trounced by rampaging crust-punk with the raw screams of vocalist Christina Blom riding side-saddle. But to leave the description there would do the music a grave injustice. Agrimonia are not that easily defined. Sure the gnarled riffs during the faster passages have the stench of Martyrdöd’s grizzly classic rock, but there is an expressive side to the music that is just as intriguing. The piano-led intro to 'Hunted' is nicely composed and displays a broader musical palette than most. ‘White Life Lies’ is also dripping with rich dynamism, from the subterranean bass-lines and synths at the beginning to the fiery discharges that are soothed by an acoustic segue-way only to ignite again. ‘Awaiting’ even lashes strident black metal across the band’s wide musical spectrum, which bleeds into a clotted mix of the eerie synths, sparse drums and guitars, before taking a number of turns through the blackness and finding a final resting place in the arms of acoustic guitars.
To craft such diverse movements and make them sound seamless is quite the sleight-of-hand, but to do so while crossing genres and retaining the same abyss-perching aura, regardless of velocity and venom, is a massive accomplishment. Agrimonia’s ability to escalate and alleviate, to roar down vitriol one minute and descend into quiet dusk the next, is what makes these five, lengthy compositions so fascinating. If you are sick of post metal bands that kneel at the altar of Neurosis only to fall into pit of lethargy, Agrimonia’s ‘Rites of Separation’ is a welcome breath of fetid air.

Dean Brown

Band info: www.agrimonia.info
Label info: www.southernlord.com

 

Dean Brown is a metal scribe based in Ireland. He is currently a contributing editor to the North American cultural magazine Popmatters and he regularly throws words for a number of other reputable loud noise publications such as About.com/heavy metal, Soundshock.com, MetalIreland.com, MoltenMagazine.com, amongst others. He has a strong affinity for music that shakes souls and leaves debilitating tinnitus in its wake and such obsession has left him financially and medically crippled, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. Follow Dean on twitter @reus85

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Rise Above Records is a name that rouses reverential bows in doom metal circles. Lee Dorrain’s (ex-Napalm Death/Cathedral) label, founded back in 1989 and financed by prying welfare out of the talons of Margaret Thatcher, has such a following that the label’s endorsement of a band is enough for people to happily hand over their own welfare payments to purchase the label’s latest releases. 2013 has been a noteworthy year so far for Rise Above with Cathedral, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Purson and Moss all receiving plenty of deserved coverage and praise. And now coming hot on the heels of those bands with its full length debut, ‘Desperate Souls of Tortured Times’, is London’s own Age of Taurus.
The band’s pertinently-titled and excellently packaged debut moves forward from its 2010 self released demo, 'In The Days of the Taurean Empire', to display discernably strengthened song-writing. Age of Taurus also continue to drink heavily from the sacrosanct well of doom’s forefathers—Sabbath, Candlemass, and Trouble, and the songs of ‘Desperate Soul...’ range from upbeat doom workouts that sound like a sincere version of the Sword (‘A Rush of Power’, ‘The Bull and the Bear’), to evocative pieces where the fantastical story-telling of vocalist/guitarist Toby W. Wright is pushed to the forefront (‘Walk With Me My Queen’, ‘Embrace the Stone’). These tracks are by far the most engaging: ‘Walk With Me My Queen’ turns the slower traits of doom into a medieval, Warning-esque ode to a loved one, and ‘Embrace the Stone’ is dynamically paced, contains blistering riffs and a brilliant guitar solo near its conclusion.
Sadly the rest of the songs, while well-structured, are nothing that we haven’t been exposed to before: conventional doom riffs and plaintive guitar harmonies, backed by drums that just bolster the riffs and do little more. The production courtesy of Jaime Gomez Arellano (Angel Witch, Ghost) suits the flow of the dramatic songs, but when the band try ramp up the aggression, as on ‘Always in the Eye’ and the title track, a grittier mix would have relieved Wright’s strong, clean vocals and the well-placed solos from trying to disguise the simplicity of it all. Age of Taurus’s take on the genre is one that, although not the heaviest or most interesting doom record you’re likely to encounter, does have plenty of redeeming qualities, but besides a handful of songs the band remains afraid to loosen its firm grip on the traditional tenets of the genre.

Dean Brown

Band info: www.facebook.com/AgeOfTaurus
Label info: www.riseaboverecords.com | www.metalblade.com

Dean Brown is a metal scribe based in Ireland. He is currently a contributing editor to the North American cultural magazine Popmatters and he regularly throws words for a number of other reputable loud noise publications such as About.com/heavy metal, Soundshock.com, MetalIreland.com, MoltenMagazine.com, amongst others. He has a strong affinity for music that shakes souls and leaves debilitating tinnitus in its wake and such obsession has left him financially and medically crippled, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. Follow Dean on twitter @reus85

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Sweden’s Entrails are back with their third length release of early Entombed-worshipping death metal, the aptly titled ‘Raging Death.’ Their previous two efforts, ‘Tales from the Morgue’ and ‘The Tomb Awaits’ were pretty satisfying doses of blasting, raw old school Swedish styled death metal, blending some nasty and vicious buzzsaw riffage with some bone-crushing rhythms and caveman growls, and this new work is simply a continuation of that style and approach. No surprises here then, die hard death metal fans will surely rejoice at the pulverising rawness and crushing brutality that emanates from tracks like ‘In Pieces,’ ‘Carved to the Bone’ and ‘Cadaverous Stench.’ That chainsaw, gut-wrenching guitar tone is one of the hallmarks of this album and truly sounds like it was committed to tape by the legendary Tomas Skogsberg at his infamous Sunlight Studios. I simply love it when the riffs literally threaten to rip off the flesh from the bones, and here you almost taste the stench of torsos getting chainsawed in half. ‘Raging Death’ recaptures that Sunlight rancid style perfectly, without trying to innovate or alter it in any way. Entrails simply want to carry on a very worthy legacy started by Entombed and Dismember years ago, and having said that, ‘Raging Death’ is a commendable work that any old school death metal enthusiast must have.

Band info: www.facebook.com/Entrails666
Label info: www.metalblade.com

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