“So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.” –Robert Frost.

Enabler comes out of the gate, barreling you over with infectious, crushing riffs. At only 21 minutes, this album doesn’t have time to spare and Enabler uses every last second to devastate you aurally. And vicariously your surroundings insofar as these breakdowns will have you tearing shit up, bringing on the end of the world.

The first thing to recognize about Enabler is that they exude heaviness. Heavy breakdowns, heavy basslines, heavy riffs, heavy growls. This is one of the more brutal albums that I have heard in recent years and having seen these guys play songs from this album on five different occasions, I can be certain when I tell you, that these songs just crush. This album is essentially a showcase of all the different styles of metal that pound the listeners ears. You have –core influences in all their varieties ranging from Terror to Terrorizer. Their overall sound might be compared to a less technical Converge while distilling their riffs through Swedish death metal a la Entombed (giving rise to the genre label of entombedcore that is currently circulating in the blogosphere) but also the Gothenburg scene.

These influences are instantly noticed in the opening bursts of Mercenary and Unconditional Surrender. The opening licks of Mercenary will hook you from the start, that nasty bassline revs up, and by the time, the chorus kicks in you’ll be ready and eager to chant with Jeff Lohrber: “I. AM. YOUR. MERCENARY.” Unconditional Surrender opens up with a chord progression you can’t help but find fun and once again you’ll be snapping your neck to keep up with the pace. Looking at the news daily on the television, you can’t help but agree with Jeff as he declares “Our generation wants to see the world burn”. That anguish and unrest finds a release in the breakdown as the opening riff is recycled to simultaneously titillate and abuse your ears.

I don’t want to reduce Enabler’s sound to simply the speed and brutality of grindcore or death metal, because what makes this album so great is the band’s ability to contrast those styles with forays into crushing doom. What makes them stick out from the rest of the scene is how they can create the force of a speeding Mack truck, slam on the brakes, and transition into a pummeling, brooding elephant marching riff in such tracks as Fucking Wartorn and End of the World Party. If you don’t know what an elephant marching riff is you will once the end of Black Friday in Hell, a perfect mimic of Converge's sound, kicks in and has you stomping like a beast. Jeff Lohrber’s talent to write an endless cache of infectiously catchy yet brutal riffs is what makes Enabler stand out. The band is make or break on whether he pulls it off in terms of writing those kinds of riffs, and as of their most recent album and most vividly captured in this album, he hasn't run out of ideas just yet. So what now? Embrace the flames of the apocalypse as Enabler gives you its soundtrack. The only thing left to do is crack open some brews and mosh.

These days, Eden Sank to Grief may only be in print as a compilation with their EP, War Begins with You, through Creator/Destructor records. You're only benefiting by getting those five extra tracks.