"loud, filthy, and groovy beat" is how Jesus H Jones describes his ultra-reactionary pop distortionists, the sacrilegiously named Jesus Jones. His off-the-cuff description isn't far from the mark. Their sound is a car crash collision of distorted punk guitars, hip-hop beats, unnerving samples, and psychedelic vocals. They look like the Clash, and sound quite unlike anyone else.

Jesus H Jones sings, plays guitar, writes the songs, produces the records, and speaks for the band. As an interviewee, he's well spoken, friendly, and to all intents and purposes, a "very nice man". On the live stage he's transformed into an explosion of flailing guitars and legs, flanked on one side by the solid-playing, solid-looking rhythm guitarist, Jerry De Borg, and on the other by bass player Al Jaworski, a vision of hair and very little face. The band's drummer, Gem, holds down the steady, heavy beats, and Barry A God completes the line-up with his all-important sampler.

As you'll have guessed, Jesus Jones are more than a little bit different. They have an indie rock image (itself quite a rarity) and a set of influences as diverse as Eric B & Rakim, Sonic Youth, Todd Terry and the Sex Pistols. Their current single, 'Info Freako', is a monster of a record. Despite a prominent pop feel, its distorted vocals and harsh samples collide uneasily with heavy rhythms and crashing guitars. It's as unsettling as it's addictive.

"Lyrically it's a song that's about rampant paranoia", explains the man with the famous name. "Not my rampant paranoia, I hasten to add. It's inspired by the hip-hop acts whose sole content is 'dissing' the opposition; it seems to me that they're completely paranoid, completely neurotic of the upcoming new rap stars who will eventually, no doubt, steal their thunder. That's all they ever talk about 'I'm great. I'm this'. It's just putting themselves above these other people. 'Info Freako' is along the same lines - the gaining of knowledge to get one up on people... really rather unpleasant."

The most unsettling thing about 'Info Freako' is the distorted vocal - reproduced perfectly live by directing Jones' voice through a guitar fuzzbox on the mixing desk. It not only catches attention - it actually suits the subject matter.

"I like that inhuman effect that you get with the distorted vocals", says the singer. "It makes it sound slightly edgy. It lends itself very well to getting that paranoia over."

The voice isn't the man's only distortion-enhanced effect. On-stage, whenever Jesus H thrashes his axe, he hits the audience with a wall of noise. "The guitar has a great capacity to be a boring, grungey old rock instrument", he opines, "but there are still ways that you can be exciting with it. That sound is part of it. I just like big, heavy, crunching guitars."

Inspired primarily by the Chris Bonnington user's guide to life, the young Jesus H first picked up his father's guitar "because it was there". But hearing 'Pretty Vacant' by the Sex Pistols was the real catalyst...

"I'M A MUSICIAN AND I'VE BEEN PLAYING THE GUITAR FOR A LONG TIME, BUT I THINK SAMPLING IS PROBABLY THE GREATEST INSTRUMENT SO FAR."

"It was three notes and they were quite easy to learn, so that was one of the things I picked up straight away", he recalls. "After that it was anything and everything. I don't go for any one particular act, I just think 'yeah, that bit sounds good, I'll play that'. It's the same approach that we have for sampling - nick it, wherever it's from!" Yes, in the great sampling debate, Jesus Jones (the band) are clearly on the side of the "snatch and grab" lobbyists.

"It's absolutely facile for people to be anti-sampling", their leader argues. "I'm a musician and I've been playing the guitar for a long time, but I think sampling is probably the greatest instrument so far, because it provides a much more direct link between the artist's imagination and the finished product: whatever the artist imagines, he can reproduce. That's the ultimate artistic expression."

But Jesus H has one slight reservation about the use of sampling. Like many powerful instruments it is, he feels, a dangerous weapon if placed in the wrong hands. "It has to be used responsibly. Hopefully we've now gone through the boring 'pump up the cliché' things: 'what do you think of my record collection? I've put it on a record of my own!' That's pretty tedious. But to steal things for a certain effect is fine. I'm all for it."

Despite all the talk of distortion, samples and strange rhythms, Jesus Jones retain a remarkably melodic pop sensibility. 'Info Freako' may be an unsettling record, but it's a pop song nonetheless.

"I think all of the best things have a good tune. Even with people like Sonic Youth: to the untrained ear it's an awful racket, but there are some lovely tunes there. I don't think you can thrash everything. You have to balance it up. With a really thrashy backing and a solid House beat, if you have a tune somewhere in there it makes it enjoyable. I like to sing tunes. I'm a strong believer in tunes."

All this being so, does Jesus H really see a place for 'Info Freako' in the Top 40?

"It's a nice idea. I think it would be very good for the charts", he says with a broad smile. "But that's not why I'm doing it, that's not why any of us are doing it: so we can compete with Kylie Minogue. If it does, that'll be great, but we do it all just for ourselves really." Pop pundits are already beginning to point to Jesus Jones as "the band of '89", so watch carefully. This might just be the second coming!