NEUROSIS: “Enemy Of The Sun” (Alternative Tentacles)

Q: What caused the L.A. earthquake? A: Somebody in San Francisco came home pissed and put this album on at full volume.

Fuck the sound of silence, this is the sound of violence. Neurosis believe that Nature is very pissed-off. That Nature is totally tired of being pissed on, eaten, shat on and polluted by a two-legged arrogant gobshite who has also had the audacity to claim that the God of all life has a beard and a pair of balls.

If earthquakes hang out and get hip to rhythms, then chances are Neurosis are one of their favourite groups. Because Neurosis understand what it is to crack and to shake all over. I saw them some months ago when they played a gig in Dublin. I won’t say I enjoyed the gig but I will say that its memory still lives with me. It has left with me its orphan ideas who spend their time looking for the mother and father of meaning. It was that type of gig. It was a total, immaculate experience. And in the bass player, Dave Edwardson, there was that voice.

That voice was a voice of disgust, of outrage. And it was so low, so earth-shatteringly low, so deep, so rumbling, so much like a large animal. In pain.

Neurosis are like a catharsis. The problem is you’re not sure where the cathartic experience will bring you if you ride it. Will it bring you release or will it bring you to a dead place? In ways, it doesn’t matter.

Warning: Buy this album only if you have a sense of the weird and absurd. Buy it if banging yourself over the head with a sledge hammer is your idea of fun. Music to dance to the death with.

• Gerry McGovern