Vatican Shadow @ Nice 'n' Sleazy, 3 July

Detroit innovator Jeff Mills defines techno as a 'futurist statement.' It has meaning, or at least it should. GG Allah, whose recorded output of deafening, slowly evolving drone is bulked-out live with harsh industrial techno, offers a gentle play on the name of punk pioneer GG Allin and our media's current Islamophobic obsessions. It's a hipster joke, and it works, but the meaning is fleeting.

Dominick Fernow's music, however, is manifestly about something - this comes through in his visuals, looped photographs of what seems to be the archetypal 'wall of madness' so familiar from hundreds of interchangeable 'catch the pyscho' movies. Newspaper clippings analysing domestic terror attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are interspersed with passages from religious texts and dictionaries. Meaning emerges from their totality – this performance is about the terror and majesty of religious extremism; about military control; the shocking fallout of sudden violence.

Mid-pattern stops and tempo changes evoke unexpected bomb blasts. Thundering, ear-splitting industrial techno passages roar and shudder like heavy weaponry. There is catharsis here, a revelling in darkness, as Fernow steps from behind his stealth-black equipment to head-bang and flail. His music is rough and unfinished in places, transcendant and euphoric in others. Moments of repose are laced with aching funereal, gothic synths. The visuals anchor these brutal, rough-shod sonic assaults, and although the message is unclear, a meaning emerges. Vatican Shadow makes techno about war, and death; musical shock and awe. Less futurist statement, more abstract, excoriating journalistic reportage.