Pitchfork

Mogwai fear Satan. So says the title of the closing track from their 1997 stunner debut, Young Team. This one song title has bewildered me more than any other in all of my musical excursions-- even more so than Roger Waters' "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict" from Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. Perhaps that confusion was caused more by the song itself rather than its title. But whereas "Several Species" takes the cake for evoking the most invigorated "turn off that infernal racket" responses, "Mogwai Fear Satan" represents all that's good about olympic post-rock: a driving theme, huge extended crescendos, a blatant climax, and a few orchestral instruments thrown in to boot. Sure, it's all cliché these days, but it's no less affecting or indispensable now than it was four years ago.

As for the title, I attended church enough to know that Christians are to fear God and his ever-looming wrath. Conversely, Christians are not to fear Satan, as Jesus Christ has plans to do away with him when the time comes. So should this be interpreted as Satan worship? Juvenile provocation? Or are Mogwai genuinely frightened by all that's diabolical? Not a bit. Any time spent with the ultraviolent "Like Herod" rules that last one out.

Perhaps it's important to consider that the base melody for Mogwai's My Father My King is extracted from a Jewish hymn traditionally sung on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which pleads to God for grace in spite of sins committed. While the track is performed as an instrumental, a translation of the hymn is included in the liner notes to this single-track EP: "Inscribe us for blessing in thy book of life." It all boils down to whether Mogwai actually intend for those implications to arise, or if they were just really into this fab Jewish melody that electro-wiz Arthur Baker taught them.

My Father My King may be a formulaic return to Mogwai's epic canon, but there's no denying that these 20 minutes reaffirm faith in this Glaswegian quintet. This year's Rock Action, while nice enough, was anything but satisfying in light of Mogwai's overpowering live performances, or even recent outings like EP+2. But it's no accident that My Father My King is being marketed as a companion to Rock Action: this demonstration of might and dynamic is exactly what that album lacked.

Mogwai waste no time introducing the middle-eastern, mid-tempo theme that will be reiterated and metamorphosed throughout the entire track. It begins with a lone, dry-signaled electric guitar in the right channel, which is followed by another in the left. Soon, drums enter with a steady, simplistic beat, miked to subwoofer-damaging perfection by Steve Albini. The two guitars diverge as the bass enters, continuing the melody in synched harmony. As the tension builds to capacity, and the death-metal fuzz distortion pedals are activated, the bass expands enough to shake the neighbor's rafters, and the drums crash perpetually.

Around the six-minute mark, the song calms with some light ambient noise from one of the guitars, but gradually builds again to a second peak as the bass acquires its own distortion and a guitar noodles in the higher registers with a pitchshifter. Sixteen minutes marks collapse into phaser heaven feedback and fuzz harmonics, then white noise. During the final four minutes, the song grinds, locomotive-like, to a screeching halt, with the phased feedback dramatically cut off mid-iteration. For the most part, the song's structure seems standard in the world of olympic post-rock. But unlike Rock Action, this recording doesn't just push the envelope; it shoves.

"My Father My King" had become a live staple before its commitment to tape, and Albini quite faithfully captures the concentrated force. Notorious for noise flirtation even in his major label days, Albini makes "no-holds-barred" a rallying cry as Mogwai kick their rendition into utter chaos. I haven't heard anything this fat and heavy since I spun Barry White and Rage Against the Machine simultaneously during a schizophrenic frat party DJ set. No, I wasn't drunk. I was experimenting.

Which isn't exactly what Mogwai is doing. Of all post-rock's domineering forces, Mogwai are the most capable of kicking the genre where it hurts. Yet, I'm still confused by the religious connotations. Is it possible to have Jewish death-metal? And should I even be considering such interpretational matters?