Illustration by Steve Larder - www.stevelarder.co.uk

Simply put this is a thing of beauty. Three songs clocking in at just over an hour; an entire movement of crust punk from Brighton’s Fall of Efrafa. On the unlikely, and unhappy, chance you don’t know who Fall of Efrafa are they formed in 2005 as a conceptual band based partly on the politics of Watership Down, Richard Adams’ book. This is the second installment in their Warren of Snares triology, with Elil meaning predator, and the album an attack on the predatory nature of institutionalised religion and superstitions.

Opener ‘Beyond the Veil’ builds from a single note melody into a roaring tome that aims its guns at the failed theologies and fables of christianity: ‘Bloated apes feign ignorance/ Gilded cloth to hide our roots’. The song slows through tumultuous passages and leads us into ‘Dominion Theology’, the most passionate of the three songs, attacking the radical christianity of North America that seeks to subjugate all those who don’t believe in their myths. The final song ‘For El Ahrairah to Cry’ is the most closely linked to Watership Down, the song being about how the Owsla (warren soldiers) abandon Frith (their god).

Musically the songs are constructed on relatively simple constructs, but when added all together create a grand, beautiful, haunting sound that can only be described as epic. Remarkable.

There is an interview with Fall of Efrafa on Last Hours here.