Inch’Allah Baby

Temenik Electric won plaudits for their robust blend of Maghreb styles with rock, pop and electronic sounds on 2013 debut Ouesh Hada?. The follow-up finds the Marseille-based band turning up the volume further on their Mediterranean-spanning Casbah rock, and is given added heft by the production skills of Justin Adams, famed Tinariwen producer and guitarist in Robert Plant's Sensational Space Shifters. Main songwriter Mehdi Haddjeri clearly owes a debt to Mano Negra, mixing punk energy, metal guitar riffs and Arabic chants into a pulsating rock maelstrom on tracks such as ‘N’Touma’, ‘Kifech’n Dir’ (which is sung in English), ‘Nahouha’ and ‘Mezel el Barani’. Heaviest of all is ‘Meujnoun’, which pounds to a sinister, head-banging Black Sabbath riff with blaring sirens and incantatory Arabic lyrics. It's the toughest, most monolithic chunk of Arabic rock since Rachid Taha's colossal ‘Barra Barra’ barnstormed its way into the movies.

There are subtler moments, too. ‘Denia Denia’ samples Arabic strings, ‘Rengaine’ has an electro-trance vibe and ‘Zakia’ is built around an insistent, seductive motif played on acoustic guitar. But be warned, they’re just the calm before the storm.