Even with the endorsement of the guys in Neurosis and their Neurot imprint, Enablers have been kind of a well-kept secret from the San Francisco underground, flying under the radar of most folks from outside of the Bay Area. Members have played with bands like Tarnation, Toiling Midgets and Swans in the past, a heavy resume for sure, and the music that they have been creating as Enablers is a heady blend of dark math rock and spoken word. I guess something like this isn't going to catch on with a large audience, but I've been a fan of the bands first album End Note for awhile. The label mentions Slint and Saccharine Trust as reference points, and you can definitely hear the Slint influence in Enablers mathy guitars and brooding, brittle arpeggios - these guys really channel that classic Slint sound better than most. And the Saccharine Trust comparison makes sense too - Enablers never venture into the jazzy territory that the Trust travelled in, but Enablers frontman Pete Simonelli delivers his lines in a straightforward spoken word style that kinda has the same feel that Jack Brewer had, giving these songs a beat-poet narrative feel. Really, the lyrics on End Note don't even seem like lyrics; it's more like hearing Pete read his poetry over Slint-y guitar arrangements that slowly unfold and bloom over restrained drumming that explodes into noisy squalls of twangy riffage and tribal thunder. As much as Enablers are informed by the sound of Slint, they do take this sound into a more expansive direction, evoking Western plains and duststorms and endless highways through the twang and slide guitar sounds that creep through their arrangements. Here and there, it sounds like bits of Neil Young seeping into their brooding post-rock. It's an interesting record that is much more restrained than the heaviness we're used to getting from Neurot, though Enablers are certainly capable of some explosive feedback and heavier riffage when they want to crank it up.