While the preceding examples, all good-to-excellent groups in their own rights, have added much to the letter of the ‘word as law’, most, if not all, have seemed to have foregone the ‘spirit-bound flesh’. Salzburg’s Our Survival Depends On Us have proven themselves the Tribe of Neurot’s most orthodox disciple by reducing the Neurosis sound to it’s most primal core, while at the same time emphasizing the folk elements which the members of that iconic band have only given full expression to in their solo outings. With zero reliance on synthesizers, loops or laptops, OSDOU’s tribal pulse, throbbing bass and roaring guitars set the scene for Mucho and Thom’s impassioned, uniquely guttural and gurgled evocations, sometimes trading off, sometimes harmonizing, if you can call it that, Austrian accents on the voices of Von Till, Kelly, Danzig and Windstein.

Rather than drone on endlessly, the band are direct and cohesive songwriters, maintaining that trademark vast epic vibe while still turning in emotional, personal performances. Nowhere is this more evident than on the album’s centerpiece, “Angel Ranger”, a stunning reinterpretation of blacklisted American Indian folk icon Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Eagle Man/Changing Woman”, spiked by a soul-searing guest violin solo by Saila Pusa. The bonafide originals are equally memorable, lyrically weaving stark tales of loneliness in a familiarly foreign milieu, eternally yearning for an archetypical honesty, passion and glory that seems irredeemably lost and forgotton. Each song is a hypnotic, dare I say totemic, mantra divinely inspired to induce a sense of both longing and purpose deep in the listener’s heart, and release the strength that hides within.