RAW NOVEMBRE: “Disturbed” (Aggressive Records)

Disturbed? Aggressive Records? Living in Mullingar is hard. “Repulsive and grotesque, nothing has changed in quite a while,” is printed on the back of this album. Song titles include: ‘Violence,’ ‘The Execution,’ ‘Kill All Rapists,’ ‘The Killing Jar’ and ‘Insanity.’ Just what the hell is happening in that Midland’s town!?

Disturbed flails around with anger and spite and an overwhelming sense of despair. ‘Insanity’ has a chorus which goes, “Blood on the walls/Blood on the floor/Blood on my hands/I can’t take anymore.” ‘Violence’ goes: “Right now it starts/It begins and descends/Into chaotic waves/As violence erupts/And feelings escape/Ask yourself what has brought us to this state?”

Raw Novembre (awful name), have a basic sense of melody behind their madness. And they are well capable of creating clever blood-stained hooks, which make you want to sing along as they pierce.

Disturbed tries to comprehend its situation. ‘All The Animals’ has a poignant touch to it. “Dead flower in my palm/I’m sorry but I’d nowhere else to stand . . . Sad eyed cow you had to die/How else could I survive?” ‘Birthday Tapes’ opens up with the lines: “Sadly I add one more/Each one feels sore/Avoid reflecting on what’s ahead/Lie in bed and act dead/Why is this so?” While ‘Violence’ asserts: “When we do we make/When we think we stagnate/When we decide we create.”

The ghettos are corroding in America but rap music is at least making some attempt to address things. In Ireland, there are 300,000 unemployed, rural Ireland is being depopulated, child abuse is rampant, bishops are bonking and so many are living on or below the poverty line. Yet our pop kids have been singularly lacking in making the slightest attempt to address any of these problems. Why is that? Apathy? Cowardice?

Disturbed works on a rock/industrial/ goth agenda with some samples filtered through. It may not exactly put Mullingar on the world music map, but it has its heart in its hands, and even though some of the lyrics are a bit stodgy (‘Kill All Rapists’ gives us a very macho solution to a male disease), many of them are insightful. “Anger is an energy,” as John Lydon famously sang. Raw Novembre have anger in abundance and in Disturbed they have produced one of the best Irish rock albums of the year.

• Gerry McGovern