The band’s fourth album finds them refining their sound even further – focussing on fewer, but longer, and more intricately arranged songs this time around – while also adding new shades and colours to their sonic palette, at times hinting at the most absorbingly atmospheric output of Blut Aus Nord at their most melodic, at others touching upon the irresistibly euphoric vibes of Astronoid at their dreamiest.

The aptly-named “A Dream of Relief”, for example, is seven and a half minutes of lilting leads and thrumming, reverberant rhythms – interspersed with moments of restrained, contemplative calm – that continues to unfold and reveal new layers as it blooms into life, while “Keeping You In My Memory” opts for an altogether darker path, one which features some of the most densely packed and aggressive material of the band’s career, alongside some of their most mesmerisingly minimalist moments, in a devastatingly dynamic display of light-and-shade songwriting.

The long, slow build up at the start of “One Day” is definitely worth the wait – trust me – as the song then blooms (or, more accurately, explodes) into brilliant, technicolour life, eventually climaxing in one of the most physically intense, emotionally invigorating, passages of metallic music you’re likely to hear all year, after which the pulsing ebb and surge of “Flow of Time” carries you forwards on waves of energy and emotion towards its own progidious, Post-Metal-infused finale.

The high point of the album, however, is “Feeling Out of Place” – equal parts vulnerable and visceral, bleak yet beautiful, thrillingly powerful yet intensely introspective – which serves as a phenomenal example of just what so-called “Post-Black Metal” can achieve without pandering towards the outside expectations or middle-of-the-road mediocrity, after which the more stripped-down and straightforward strains of “Fading” serve as a sublime coda to bring the record to a conclusion.