Surprising though it may seem to those who associate Christian music with tambourines, there is such a thing as Christian rock. People generally ignore it, which is perhaps why, after six years, 16 Horsepower are still a cult item, despite playing some of the most impressively taut rock it's possible to hear. The Denver quintet's ravaged gospels are the sound of the earth rupturing as bear-size boulders avalanche beneath a storm of iron spikes. Their third album, Secret South, produces over half the evening's set at the Borderline in London, but the recording gives little indication of how fiercely, urgently propulsive the music is live.

Guitars pound, a scratching violin sounds like coffins breaking open, Pascal Humbert makes the room quiver by punching a bow across his double bass, while Jean-Yves Tola gives the terrifying impression that a few thousand rattlesnakes are hiding in his drumkit. At the heart of the maelstrom is frontman David Eugene Edwards, a wide-eyed grandson of a preacher man. He doesn't breathe so much as gulp air down as he spits out the words "Praise Jesus" (American Wheeze), "He is too divine" (Splinters) and "It ain't no sin to be forgiven" (Straw Foot) with a fervour that takes you aback more than it draws you in.

Edwards sings as if this were the 15th century and plays as if it were the 19th. Switching from guitar to clattering banjo to an ancient, rickety bandoneon that must have been blessed to withstand the battering he gives it, he conjures up bleak melodies that sound as old as the hills. Bob Dylan is an inspiration, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are musical and lyrical relations, but mostly it is the folk and blues of the deep south that he is reviving.

The band's clanking cover version of the traditional song Wayfaring Stranger is startling, breaking down in the middle like a barn shattering in a tempest to reinforce the song's assertion that there's darkness to cross before one can reach heaven. For the jaunty country dance Praying Arm Lane and the shuddering Harm's Way, the band attach bluegrass to a freight train and play like they're hurtling down rusty, broken tracks.

The band's weakness is the excess of passion: Edwards rarely varies his tone of voice, and there's little respite from the stomach-churning dynamics. But, as new single Clogger puts it, 16 Horsepower are replicating "the sound of heaven's hounding", and there'll be no rest for us wicked.

	Splinters Praying Arm Lane Strong Man Wayfaring Stranger Harm's Way American Wheeze Burning Bush Poor Mouth Straw Foot Clogger ====== Silver Saddle Flowers in my Heart Cinder Alley Low Estate Black Soul Choir ====== For Heaven's Sake

Setlist by Andy.

Perhaps as a result of the smaller venue, but also thanks to considerably more advance publicity, the crowd was considerably more tightly packed for Sixteen Horsepower's second visit of 2000 to London than it had been a couple of months earlier. With personal space in such short supply, and the band in especially cathartic mood, the band mesmerized the packed room.

When they arrived in London, Sixteen Horsepower was drawing to the end of a lengthy European tour supporting their recently released third album Secret South. The experience showed as the five-piece band (including young violinist Elin Palmer) ripped through a stronger set than on their previous visit, taking tracks from all of their studio releases and filling the darkened Borderline with their unique sound.

In a live setting, that sound regains the rough edge which was partly rubbed away on Secret South. Edwards's passion and intensity filters through the apocalyptic country sounds, seizing the listener and not letting go for well over an hour. You get the feeling that wearing his heart on his sleeve isn't enough for Edwards, he wants to force it into your hands, whatever state it may be in.

Sixteen Horsepower make great albums. But they more than match them live and it's the small venues which really bring that home. Be sure to see them soon, if things continue the way they're going (at least in Europe) these cozy clubs may soon be a thing of the past.

By James Stewart