That was until last week. A band called Silver Mt. Zion from Montreal, Canada played Scala in London to a sold-out crowd. After the first song, the audience knew they were witnessing something special, the band certainly had no doubt, and despite the thumping percussion and apocalyptic guitar crescendos there was barely a bobbing head in the audience throughout. It’s called transfixion.

How to describe the band? Before reflecting on their political significance or insignificance, it is important to try to put into words the strength of the direct and overwhelming emotional connection this group exerts. It is not just that with two violinists, a cellist, bassist, two guitarists and a drummer, all of whom join in synchronised singing and chanting, that the wall of sound knocks you off your feet, there is something more propelling it forward. In this day and age it almost sounds incredible, but what they have, which the others don’t, and what directly feeds into the crushing monumentality and heart wrenching emotionality of their composition, is that unfashionably dirty word: belief.

Before you ask, no it is not entirely clear what they believe in. The titles of the tracks don’t take much interpretation for sure: ‘One million died to make this sound’ and ‘Microphones in the Trees’ for example; but summing up the fanatical, relentless, almost childlike naivety of what compels lead singer Efrim to write music like this cannot be easily forced into a simple political analysis. It is almost as if their belief and desire for a utopian catharsis exceeds the contemporary political lexicon. It is not going too far to say that what Silver Mt. Zion evoke is nothing less than the deep sense of loss at being born in a time in which they are confronted with this paradox.

But unlike the wet fatalism of many of their contemporaries, Silver Mt. Zion don’t take the situation lightly. The agitprop screeching, epic crescendos, ritualistic singing, all imply some sort of desired rebirth of radical communalism. As their music has developed to this current state of affairs, increasingly the group ethos has morphed into an aesthetic unity in which the unified singing of the group breaks down the atomised ‘division of labour’ of many guitar-based bands, which frequently only continue touring together because of the ability of their collective brand to put bums on seats. The same doubts never creep in here: the band’s unity is without question and inscribed into the very composition and power of the songs.

The label which they belong to, Constellation, is perhaps one of the few in the world to cling onto the concept of the autonomy of the indie label. The bands on the label don’t release music videos. Rarely give interviews. They are impressively reluctant to allow their music to be pasted over adverts or lame Hollywood movies. The labels most famous act, Godspeed You Black Emperor, put on their final record a schematic showing the ownership structures that linked all the major labels to the arms manufacturers. In short, if there is anyone keeping the flame alive, it is these guys.

What a relief - thank you - it is with the utmost disgust and contempt that from a teenager to the present day I witnessed the complete disregard for the indie ethos that led to my favourite music being symbolically raped by its inclusion on BBC documentaries, car commercials, and lamentable, worthless films. So, despite the cynicism with which this quest for purity has been met - ‘after all there’s no such thing as thing as selling out right?’ - it is directly responsible for the quality of their music and their artistic contributions. And this is exactly how they situate their response to the prevailing climate in a recent (rare) interview.

I think our overriding principle always is… there’s a better world we want to live in. We’re just a bunch of sloppy musicians; we don’t have any aspirations to be like Bono or whatever. We’re completely cynical about the ability for music to affect any sort of political change. We’re not naïve idealists or anything. But, if this is the task at hand, if this is what we labour at, the least we can do is conduct ourselves with integrity, intelligence and thought. We take any decision we make really, really seriously. And so for doing that, yeah, we think a lot about the music, not just in a narrow sense, but about all industries that surround the music, the promotion of live music, the venues, all of that. We could write a masters thesis on all the structures that exist.

It is hard to believe that the inspiring dogmatism with which they pursue this quest for purity wasn’t in part responsible for the size of the audience. Because if there is anything that compels such devotion on the part of its fans, and it is certainly not in response to the increasingly negative reviews the band is getting from the critics even in the supposedly independent online world, it is that Silver Mt Zion’s music encapsulates this frustration. Even if in interview they sound somewhat wistful, at least musically they turn manage to turn despondency into blind rage, apathy into tear-forming euphoria.

That night I left the club with my friends. We all knew we had witnessed something special, something great, something important. There didn’t seem much to say though beyond mumbling about what we had just experienced. As I walked home I knew I had to translate this into something tangible and radical in the ‘real world.’ I just didn’t know what it was. But I wanted to know, and that’s why the band matters.