Waco

Violent Soho have about as much in common with cult leader David Koresh as an echidna does with a banana, but their hugely anticipated new album Waco - named for the small Texas city that was the site of the Koresh-led Branch-Davidian siege/massacre/shootout with the FBI in 1993 - is as similarly dismissive as federal agents were of 'restrained response'.

The brand-stonking-new array of crashing grunge riffs and revelatory singalong anthems - the type that, after one listen, feel like you've been listening to for years - are just the sort we've come to expect from the owners of the best Australian rock'n'roll redemption story of the past decade. Waco is an album that blows any and all expectation out of the water, making for a fitting companion piece to their breakthrough 2013 album, Hungry Ghost.

Waco is instantly recognisable as Violent Soho, full of big themes and big riffs, but also expressly intricate. It's evident everywhere: behind the fist-pumping riff-anthem of lead single 'Like Soda', and the tumbling, scorching guitars of 'How To Taste'; in the delicate melding of light and shade on 'Evergreen'; hiding behind 'Slow Wave's churning burn, and in 'Viceroy's faint calypso touches mixing with head-kicking guitars: there are unexpected twists and turns everywhere. And from first listen it's patently obvious that the band's songcraft has taken a quantum leap.