Y’see, whatever follows this opening line, ultimately, ain’t telling you shit about Dead Meadow that you don’t already know. The D.C. trio deliver stoner grooves locked tight into dark swathes of noise, rumbling bass the captain and a pounding back beat walking the plank entirely on purpose, going swimming with the sharks for shits ‘n’ giggles. Live, they do this at a volume level likely to shatter the synthetic hips of pension queue war veterans and the incubators of infants born a month too soon; it’s merciless, punishing and shocking. Yet entirely necessary: you don’t understand Dead Meadow like you would a black-and-white on-paper formula for sonic tumultuousness. You stand as upright as possible and wait for your ribs to throb in time with what’s thickening the air about ear holes sweating like an in-the-dock comedian gone so very wrong.

But first, something not so completely different. Arbouretum, straight out of Baltimore via a vault of downers and the looting of an amplifier store, ply a similar trade in making the body quake like it’s strapped to the bottom of a bullet train, but mix their primeval savageness with a tenderness barely existent in this evening’s headliners. It’s psyche-folk meets the heavy, heavy sound; alternative country rock gone way left of a see-sawing centre; one step beyond the obvious and odious and absolutely perfect warm-up material for the main event. Beards are stroked with as much aplomb as guitars are caressed, and the four men of this particular touring line-up do a fine job of selling the highlights of recent long-play offering Rites Of Uncovering. It’s got more than a foot’s worth of toes dipped in the past, but their set leaves a fine buzz in the air, if not quite in the ears.

That, of course, is to come.

Break, beer, talk, deafening fucking riff from outer space delivered in perfect slow motion. Dead Meadow hit their stride instantaneously; their audience snaps taut to attention, gradually lowering heads as the nod takes hold. And when it does, forget beating your way out of a state similar to that of falling under the spell of a shaman’s trace: Dead Meadow’s formula might be a simple one – it can’t be summarised as anything else, really, but LOUD and SLOW – but such is its immediacy that defences already lowered by tingling expectation and the imbibing of alcohol stand exactly no chance of preventing the sensual stranglehold.

Song titles? Set list? Forget such matter-of-fact funnelling of reportage, such inappropriately conventional conveyance of show facets that only oddball train-spotters revel in (and solely to proffer a contrasting, told-you-so trump comment in this site’s case). Dead Meadow’s live show isn’t a journalist’s for the criticising. It’s an experience that can only be discussed between been-there types. If you’re one such person, feel free to make public your finest adjectives, each but another failure in a succession of attempts to accurately file feelings on a band who – as has been said time and again, and not just here – really don’t break any moulds nor warrant on-record recommendation beyond all potential peers. It’s not simply square pegs in round holes: the pegs are made of lead and the holes clogged like arteries. Dead Meadow are not revelatory, but they feel special like so few acts can.

Every line a loser, nothing new is learned. Those that bear the scars – internal and invisible to onlookers – know this is but a consolidating piece of prose, its intention to only stoke the fires that burn in the bellies of everyone who’s been sucked into a Dead Meadow set and let loose only when the trio are thoroughly done. Finished, finished; the night doesn’t sooth the burn so much as dry the throat, leaving the scattering departed thirsty to brave the bombast at the next convenient opportunity.

The only sentiment clear and present: the opening one.