How do you choose where to start when a huge pile of CDs arrive on your desk? Easy. Pick the one with the prettiest cover. How girly is that? And the winner is...Junius!

Actually, judging by the music, I don't think that Junius would be all that impressed by coming first in my ad hoc desktop competition. 'The Martyrdom Of A Catastrophist' is sombrely swinging and gothically groovy but, I have to admit, my head is turned when I hear who I think is Shaun Ryder on vocals. And so my attention shifts sidewards and I start hearing Joy Division when perhaps I should perhaps be hearing Fields of the Nephilim.

OK. So they don't sound like Joy Division but the doom, the gloom, the gothic and the grand are certainly all present and correct. The atmosphere is real funereal end of the world stuff. The wall of guitars take on the sound of a thousand Gregorian chanting monks. The reverbs give an epic proportion to the music. And it's music that has been recorded in crypts and cellars and performed in high ceilinged cathedrals to congregations who watch as the world burns beyond the narrow stained-glass windows.

Death, war, graves, blood and sacrifice are the lyrical ingredients to this apocalyptic stew and it's futile to try and extricate and examine any of these songs away from the album itself. They are part of the whole and belong together. Although, having said that 'Elishiva, I Love You' and 'Letters From Saint Angelica' do come the closest to being the most uplifting songs of the bunch, but it's hard to imagine anyone scanning this album for 'that song' that makes their iPod playlist. And that's good news to me. I'm an album man through and through. If I wanted to constantly listen to random tracks I'm sure that I'd be buying the latest 'Now That's What I Call Music' CD and entering the next pub karaoke competition.

Musicologists arriving at this band for the first time might be forgiven for thinking that Julius are some sort of dark indie supergroup comprising of members of Depeche Mode, The Cure and The Verve but they are in fact a continent away from those greats and hail from Boston Massachusetts.

People often accuse me of listening to depressing, sullen and sombre music. Now, I guess, even I have to admit that they have a point.

http://www.myspace.com/junius

http://www.juniusmusic.com/