Finnish rockers Sleep of Monsters are back, and it’s very much business as usual for former Babylon Whore Ike Vil and company; If you’re in the know, you’ll know that means you’re up for another deliciously sensuous smorgasbord of gothic rock, burnished by esoteric lyrics and superior performances. If you’re new to the band, well done – you’ve picked a mighty fine time to climb aboard the SoM bandwagon…

Put simply, and to avoid making you hang around if you’ve got more important places to be, on tracks like Melinoe and The Singer the band have never sounded better, slinking effortlessly among the somnolent undergowths of Goth tropery, wringing the life out of a host of influences and molding them to their own design. It’s easy perhaps to raise a smirj when Vil opens his mouth and that velvet smooth GOTH voice seeps out, but you know what? He does it so well that smirking is actually pointless. Vil is deadly serious about that lip curl, let me tell you, and he deploys it with leery, lascivious panache all over the album. Better to wallow in the grandeur than carp at the pretence, surely…

I’ll level with yas all at this point – when our hero sings of the ‘origin of storms’ I think of Blue Öyster Cult rather than anything more esoteric; Similarly when he declares himself to be ‘parched with thirst, and dying’ it’s Celtic Frost that pops into my ever-more-addled mind; I have little to no idea of what Vil sings, although I’m sure if you yourself have then it adds yet another level to enjoy, and I’m all for that. But for me it’s the more visceral joys that entice, and here, too, Sleep of Monsters come fully equipped.

The opening riff to the superbly-titled Black Blacker Than Black, for instance, is gratifyingly heavy and reminds this reviewer of  American goth nu-metallers Pist.On in their pomp; and if there’s nothing quite so immediate as the band’s to-date unrivalled highlight, The Art of Passau from 2016’s Poison Garden, then overall it must be noted that pound for pound this is the band’s strongest, most consistently beguiling album yet.

Don’t get me wrong – for all my flippancy it’s clear that Sleep of Monsters are producing, important, substantial music here; Ghost have proven that occult music doesn’t need to be impenetrable to the untutored ear, and on ΓΓΓ you’ll find some of the most accessible occult rock ever committed to tape. On all levels this is a great success.

ΓΓΓ releases on May 12th.