With a religious temple at its literal and cultural heart and a defiant underground scene bubbling toward the surface, the Salt Lake City metropolitan area is easily one of the most dynamic and volatile socio-cultural environments on the planet—and home to some of the most explosive and synergistic music of today.

A product of Salt Lake's charged subterrane, Daughters of the Nile emerged in 1989 to instant acclaim: packing the area's premier clubs with fevered devotees and performing with such influential artists as The Church, Christian Death, Electric Hellfire Club and Godhead. Now, freshly arrived on the Seattle scene, the four-man band expands on its roots in a new, untitled four-track EP. A flexing follow-up to the band's full-length 1998 release, Apocatastasis, the just-recorded EP deals a masterful meld of romantic, post-gothic fury with the sonic musculature of hard rock instrumentation.

Never a band easily categorized, Daughters' members nonetheless define their sound as aggressively melodic, darkly romantic, their lyrics frustrated and questioning, rich with symbolism and metaphors. "There's nothing innocent or naïve about us," says the foursome, "but our music reflects that fierce confidence and sexuality while hanging onto a childlike search for truth."

Written and arranged by Daughters, the new EP presents the band's hard-driving, post-psychedelic interpretation of its chief interests: politics, philosophy, and fictional tales. In "Dead Run," a helicopter door-gunner reveals his airborne perspective on the Vietnam War; "Bloodgrass" examines an addict's crippling guilt; "Author" lays bare the limits of language; and in "Problem," listeners become voyeurs to lovers in crisis.

Daughters of the Nile are: Daron on vocals, Lars on guitar, Kyle on bass, and Jeff on drums.