Here be dragons: Todd frontman Craig Clouse breathes fire, and his band spit molten lead from battered keyboards and knackered guitars. Todd don’t make music for parties. They’re not going to be the Next Big Thing. They’re not so hot right now. They are going to strip your insides of whatever it is that keeps your heart beating and turn your corpse into a wall adornment.

‘Purity Pledge’ is a fucking mess: giant riffs, slasher-flick keys and colossal drums combine to make a squall quite unlike anything else. If your ears, or rather what’s left of them, have been glued to the ground of late then you’ll already know that this kicks more shoddy faux-punk ass than an army of Joe Cardemone clones. You’ll know that it’s as commercial sounding as Gary Glitter singing his way through an hour of nursery rhyme favourites. Most importantly, you’ll know that it’s special. It’s incomparable to anything contemporary, such is its sonic excess (not even buddies Part Chimp can claim to be this loud). It should carry a warning on the side of it, something about Todd seriously damaging your health. Your unborn baby will emerge addicted to rock and roll depravity before it’s even sucked back its first breath of hospital air should you press your heaving belly against a speaker bellowing this. Your unborn baby will grow up to be a terror to society. I, for one, will follow its lead.

Monolithic; immense; powerful; terrifying – half-baked adjectives and predictable clichés can only sell a record so much. Wrap your listening gear around this for 40 minutes and you’ll be a bloodied wreck, but you’ll rarely have felt better. Here be dragons; hear them roar.