Artist

Enkindel

American emo band

Louisville, United States • Disbanded 1997

Enkindel is a music group from Louisville, United States. Their discography on Gatefold includes 1 record.

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Biography

Enkindel was a long running hardcore band in the mid 1990s. "Hey, it ain't slayer, but at least you can mosh to it" (from an Enkindel flyer) pretty much summed up the band. Their style was the characteristic "melodic hardcore" of the mid 90s with chugga-chugga guitars and a singer that sang/screamed (a little more of the former, a little less of the latter), but it also mixed in influences from their contemporaries such as Endpoint (with whom they shared a member), and Erchint (with whom they split a 7").

The Arc of Enkindel

The pivots — what forced Enkindel to reinvent.

  1. The Toy Era

    In 1992, the band debuted with the 'Toy' release, capturing a raw, unpolished hardcore energy that was common in the early '90s basement circuits. They relied on sheer volume and frantic tempos to mask their technical limitations and cheap recording gear. Brickey's vocals on these tracks are pushed completely into the red, fighting against muddy guitar tracks and a buried rhythm section. It is a document of a young band figuring out how to translate live aggression onto magnetic tape.

  2. Some Assembly Required

    By 1996, the band consolidated their sound for what would be their final major statement, 'Some Assembly Required'. The songwriting shifted toward more structured, melodic arrangements without losing the abrasive emotional core that defined their early DIY tape days. The guitars opened up with more dynamic range, moving between quiet, tense verses and massive, distorted choruses. Shortly after this release, the grinding reality of self-funded touring and indie distribution wore them down, leading to their quiet disbandment in 1997.

Influences

  • Rites of Spring — Enkindel took the blueprint of Guy Picciotto's desperate, cracked vocal delivery and applied it to their own midwestern hardcore framework. You can hear this influence in the frantic, highly personal lyricism and the rejection of standard verse-chorus structures on their 1992 debut. It is the direct source for their emotional intensity.
  • Fugazi — The band frequently pointed to Ian MacKaye's DIY ethics and interlocking guitar play as their main operational and musical guide. The sharp, angular guitar octaves and dub-influenced basslines on 'Some Assembly Required' show a direct lineage to 'Repeater'. They wanted that same tight, rhythmic tension.
  • Dag Nasty — The melodic but aggressive guitar work of Brian Baker heavily shaped how Enkindel structured their hooks. You hear it in the driving, uptempo melodic punk rhythms that underpin the chaotic vocals of 'Toy'. It kept their harshest moments grounded in actual melody.
  • Jawbreaker — Blake Schwarzenbach's gravelly vocal rasp and narrative lyric style were massive touchstones for Mark Brickey. The shift toward more introspective, mid-tempo songwriting on Enkindel's 1996 material directly mirrors Jawbreaker's transition from rough punk to structured indie-rock. It is the bridge between raw hardcore and emo.
  • Squirrel Bait — As local Kentucky predecessors, Squirrel Bait provided the exact sonic blueprint for combining greasy midwestern indie rock with fast hardcore punk. Enkindel inherited the dirty, low-end guitar tones and regional isolation that defined the Louisville sound. They carried that specific regional grit into the late '90s.

Discography

Their records — most-collected first.

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