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The second album from the unique Texan crafters of the macabre, the typist’s vexation that is Ancient VVisdom, sees the trio progress further along the dark and pitted road they’ve made their own.

Songs like The Beginning and I Am Rebirth gently hint at hope and optimism, a feeling backed up by AVV’s extraordinary brand of acoustic metal and oddly freeway-relaxed guitar lines. But soon hope and optimism are crushed like a Fabergé egg under the tracks of a tank as the trio veer into a world beyond good and evil (Far Beyond Good And Evil), death (Deathlik), death (The Last Man On Earth), death (Never Live Again) and death (Here Is The Grave).

It’s the oddness of their light instrumentation that brings a freshness to this popular niche music, and in the case of Deathlike, it’s both striking and effective.

David Quantick is an English novelist, comedy writer and critic, who has worked as a journalist and screenwriter. A former staff writer for the music magazine NME, his writing credits have included On the Hour, Blue Jam, TV Burp and Veep; for the latter of these he won an Emmy in 2015.