Making It Happen

"If there's five people at all of our shows, I don't really care. Granted, I'd like to play in front of a tonne of people, but I don't really care at the end of the day. I'm just flattered that there's an audience for this band outside of my hometown.”

Next to the entry for 'laidback' in your dictionary, there should be a picture of Enabler guitarist/vocalist Jeffrey Lohrber. Over Enabler's career, Lohrber has come to stand as the band's sole original member, and as such he's developed a preternatural ability to roll with the punches.

Whether that's replacing half of the band, or flying across the Pacific to play a tour of underground shows, Lohrber is up for it. After all, they're playing in a loose, chaotic hardcore band; they're not working within a genre that lends itself well to meticulousness.

It's this attitude that has also seen the band produce an impressive string of releases. From a host of demos, splits and EPs earlier in their career to last year's Southern Lord full-length All Hail The Void and their latest, the Shift Of Redemption EP, Lohrber and Enabler have never had a grand plan.

“Every release just kind of, and I don't want to make us sound unprofessional, but it just kind of gets thrown together,” he admits. “We just figure it out along the way. The writing process is pretty much just me in my bedroom, highly caffeinated and smoking a tonne of weed. The songs just kind of flow out that way, and then when it comes time to decide whether it's going to be a full-length or an EP or whatever, it's just pretty loose.

“I wrote all the songs for the Shift Of Redemption EP while we were waiting for the mix to come back on our last full-length. For All Hail The Void we did like 18 days of tracking and then the producer took about three months to edit and mix the whole thing. And it was kind of frustrating, because I couldn't even listen back to what I'd just spent three weeks on. So then out of that frustration, and just the need to be creating something, the first song for this EP came about.

“We tracked the EP in two days. We didn't have any kind of metronome with it because everything on the first record is very edited and made to sound perfect, so we thought, 'Let's make this sound a little looser. Let's make it sound like a band playing in your fucking living room'.”

Whether there's a second full-length on the way, Lohrber is typically unsure. Sure, there's songs ready to go – the guitarist/vocalist counts 19 sitting there – but because the band's without a record label, they'll just have to see what happens. And though most bands would freak out under such circumstances, Enabler are typically chill.

“We're kind of going with it right now,” Lohrber smiles. “We're not on a label at the moment so there's no contractual obligations to anyone, so we're just figuring it out. I guess if six months go by down the road and nobody wants to put out the next full-length, we'll just figure something out then. There's not really any plan right now.”