It’s been said that Mdou Moctar, the ferocious guitar whiz some have dubbed the “Eddie Van Halen of Tuareg” built his first guitar because of Abdallah Oumbadougou. So it’s fitting that on the heels of Oumbadougou’s stellar compilation we get to Moctar’s sixth album of righteous rock, Funeral for Justice. And similar to that compilation, the music is imbued with a fiery political perspective and lyrics that speak to the loss of Nigerian culture in a land of continued colonialism and encroaching homogenization. Where the two differ is in the intensity of their approach. Where Oumbadougou sits nestled in an almost folk blues exploration, Mdou Moctar blazes out with – to leverage a Clutch title – pure rock fury.

Moctar first came to my attention at eat time he did for many, with his breakout 2019 album Ilana: The Creator. Having expanded to a full band lineup, the music was immediate, a combination of what I had already discovered of modern African music laced with a sinewy rock musculature that was entirely new at the time. The blend of desert blues with western psych and modern rock flourished even more on the band’s first release for Matador, 2021’s Afrique Victime. Both those album made my end of year list, so I was completely primed for whatever Funeral For Justice was going to bring. While it’s definitely more of the same, my immediate impression was that some of the rock has been turned up even more: there’s a great video where Moctar sits down with Dweezil Zappa to discuss guitar playing and you can see the facility of the man’s playing, his fingers flying and picking the strings in such a unique way. Seeing that technique and sound blended into the massive rock anthem that is the opening title track is a marvel.

From there it’s a whirlwind of influences and incredible, incredible playing. There’s a particular stutter step in the rhythms of tuareg music that, mixed with the rich blues riffing on “Imouhar” that lulls you into this hypnotic groove for a moment. Then the band literally crashes into the song in a blast of mammoth sized rock and it knocks your soul back into your spine. The song, about the loss of indigenous language (thank you Matador for making sure the album has translated lyrics) is an easy favorite not just for the album, but for the band to date, and if you’re looking to surprise a newbie to this style of music you can do a lot worse than blast them with the track.

Sequencing is important, so it’s a nice breath to go from the power of the first two songs to something more delicate like “Takoba” that emphasizes the circular, ringing guitar lines. Moctar’s solo is exquisite, hitting the right channel like a fluttering bird in your ear. But then you get the feedback laden squall of “Sousoume Tamacheq” and you’re back in the desert, traveling with the band as they propel you forward in their personal history, their connection to the Nigerian land where orphans are all too plentiful. Most of Funeral For Justice takes this push/pull approach to its songs, where the traditional fights with and then surrenders to the rock and psych and folk, detouring for the briefest of moments (24 seconds, to be precise) for the segue “Djallo #1” before returning to the crashing swagger of “Oh France” where Moctar’s leads sally forth to the heavens.

Far from diminishing returns, Mdou Moctar continues to expand and show how vital it is to maintain Africa’s sense of identity and culture, and how keeping it can breathe new life into other forms of art.

Who wants to live in a world where this kind of things gets homogenized into just another slice of white bread?