For Brit darklings Inver, the year would appear to be 1983, or thereabouts. In Sentinel Daily terms, of course, a strong musical affinity with the Thatcher years is never going to be anything other than a bonus, but I suspect there may be a fair few out there in listenerland, raised on smooth audio plugins and vocoder mediocrity, who might struggle with the harsh sturm und drang presented on the late-album banger We All Get Lost.

We All Get Lost is a startling amalgam of Bauhaus and Killing Joke; Raw, clangy guitars clash with ‘futuristic’ bleeps in strident fashion, skeletal riffage battling it out with the clattering low end in a harrowing battle to the death. When the resolution of the song’s anthemic chorus comes it’s blessed relief, but, mark my words, there’s a fair chance you’ll be going back for more when the song ends.

That’s probably a touch sado-masochistic, but then post-punk was rife with that sort of imagery ‘back in the day’, so it’s a win win. Similarly successful, but for different reasons, is the stentorian chest beating of Tarnished Son, which hauls it’s carcass into the nineties for a tilt at the Paradise Lost crown. It’s rather good if truth be told, the band’s knack for a desperate-sounding chorus refrain hitting paydirt over a spiralling guitar line that might only fairly be described as ‘Mackintoshesque’.

I Stand With Trees throws a bit of Hawkwind into the pot, and the little spoken word interlude and synthy intro piece also give off a proggish whiff (I thought it sounded like Brit AOR titans Ten – Ed). But for all that, the constant calls to the past make a pretty enjoyable listen in the present. This is an ambitious band, a band intent on telling their tale on the biggest stage available to them; But there’s a rawness here too, a realness that keeps them rooted somewhere where fans like you and me can still access their dream. I rather like Inver, and I think you will too if you give ’em a chance…

On This Earth is out now.