Playing precise, complex instrumental rock without the aggression of other “math-rock” bands like Botch, this Pittsburgh four-piece hypnotized audiences throughout most of the ’90s before disbanding and re-forming for last year’s World Class Listening Problem. Their sound continues to evoke “what an M.C. Escher drawing would sound like if made into music,” as a reviewer once said. But the fact that once-hallowed indie label Touch and Go released all their albums but World Class, out on metal label Relapse, indicates both the current weakness of ’90s scene tastemakers and the increasingly all-encompassing arms of metal. With Enablers and the Thrones.

Fri., Dec. 7, 9 p.m., 2007