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There are no frills here and no let up in ferocity or intensity. This is Hypocrisy going back to their formative days, but without any hint of nostalgia or desperation, and in doing so they’ve come up with a tirade of riffs, vocal growls and bestial rhythmic belligerence.

As soon as the title track kicks in, you just know Peter Tägtgren and his band are about to deliver something special, and they don’t disappoint. The crushing Tales Of The Spineless and United We Fall lead into the slightly more sophisticated 44 Double Zero, before Hell Is Where I Stay borders on darker, doomier fare, while When Death Calls is an extreme metal masterclass.

As you’d expect from a band of this stature, neither the musicianship nor the sense of melody ever drop below the highest standards. But what is right to the forefront is a brutality that brings to mind their earliest albums. Hypocrisy haven’t so much rediscovered themselves as rejuvenated their spirit. It’s nine tracks of nuclear fission.

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.