Maud the Moth is the alter-ego of Amaya López-Carramero, a Spanish-born, Edinburgh-based singer and composer. Her scorched anthems build to crushing intensity and screaming crescendo despite often starting life akin to the gothier recesses of Regina Spektor’s back catalogue. López-Carramero’s a master at looping voice, piano and miscellaneous effects to construct whole worlds that she duly destroys by a song’s finale. Mixing the old with the new, The Distaff‘s, ‘A temple by the river’ hits just as hard as ‘Turpentine’ from a decade ago.

Before you hear the first loud, reverberating chord you might be surprised at the apparent whimsy of Earth; Dylan Carlson (guitar) introduces the band and the plan for the evening in his nasally twang, Bill Herzog (bass) beams behind beard and Stetson, while Adrienne Davies (drums) presages a recurring theme of the evening by chugging water.

Earth may have moved away from their long-form, experimental distortion since reconvening in the early 2000s, though that’s not to say they don’t still pray at the altar of drone-metal and exquisitely harvested feedback. But now there’s space for a little country rock (‘Scalphunter’s Blues’), some murky melodicism (‘Old Black’, ‘Even Hell Has Its Heroes’) and even a doomified Mötley Crüe cover (‘Misunderstood’).

The remarkably slow tempos are matched by remarkably slow headbanging, but the pokey Room 2 quickly heats up; the cheer when Adrienne Davies is finally given the fan she keeps requesting is one of the loudest of the night. Carlson has time for a bit of chat, expressing mixed feelings about the unseasonable warmth and shouting out Russell Haswell (who quickly spurns the goodwill by antagonising everyone with blurts of nonsense: classic Russell). ‘Lens of Unrectified Night’ comes with the winking warning that he realised he’d written a prog song after the fact (and he’s ambivalent at best towards Marillion). But he’s all business when the music starts, whether intricately noodling on a brilliant ‘Land of Some Other Order’ or glaring through the glasses he hates while swinging his guitar like the axe it resembles.

‘The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull’ ends the relatively short set on a cinematic high; like Maud the Moth earlier Earth are world-builders, but where López-Carramero revelled in human melodrama, the top trio work from something more elemental. There’s a flavour of the ancient in the considered cymbal cracks and knotty, distorted melodies. The deliberate pace and sustained chords are made for wide expanses that stretch without limit. But even confined in Room 2, Earth can take you to primitive vistas and beyond; noise so powerful you gladly surrender to it.