With any band associated with Constellation, in particular Godspeed You Black Emperor!, comes a fair amount of existentialist baggage, perfect for soothing the jangled nerves of many a slightly anti-capitalist goatee stroker. But forget all that; there's a curious tension in the sort of music produced by prog-punk bands, and in their previous incarnation as the three-piece A Silver Mount Zion on 2000's Though He Has Left Us..., they certainly played the taut-vs-tame mojo for all it was worth, and it almost got there, particulary on "13 Angels". But then the whole premise of that album seemed to be "Hey, my dog died. Let's Jam. Morosely!".

This time, they made it. Having tunes that last the distance rather than getting bogged in the sonic gloop that fucked up, well, GYBE's Raise Your Skinny Fists, as does ditching the rather tedious found-sound snippets and substituting them with original ranty bits, "Built Then Burnt (Hurrah! Hurrah!)" really should make one cringe at the earnestness of the delivery but instead comes off as being ... well, sexy. Even though the talk of crashing planes into rivers and disassembling Jericho was a bit uncanny, with the album coming out the month after That Thing. Doubling the line-up to six helps to fill out things as well, there's a little trade-off in crispness, but the textural element of the added strings plus the contribution of the 'guests' makes up for it.

The keeper is of course "The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes", with the rather harmonic guitar being joined by the string ensemble as the dude starts the refrain "musicians are cowards". Yeah, it's pretty good, for all the crinkly bits.