Album Review: The Mark Of Cain - Songs Of The Third And Fifth

They're back. The Mark Of Cain, Australia's finest purveyors of powerhouse rock, return with their fifth studio album and first since 2001's epic This Is This. Songs Of The Third And Fifth finds the trio back in familiar terrain, pummelling the senses and sensibilities in equal measure with their primal, unrelenting rock'n'roll.

Unsurprisingly military imagery abounds in both the lyrics (Avenger, Milosevic) and the album artwork (all military fatigues and diagrams of weapons and munitions) and the familiar TMOC tropes of isolation and despair are back in force (1000 Yards, Separatist) but in this case compounded by lyricist John Scott's recent breakup, making his anguished howls seem incredibly impassioned. Grey 11 is ostensibly about returning home from military conflict, so naturally they roped in old sparring partner Henry Rollins to contribute vocals, but towards the end of the album such allegories are replaced by more overtly personal tracts, The Argument (“I took the bad news in my stride/ Too late to care too proud to cry”) and Heart Of Stone (“I watched your simple love distil the weaker side of me”) brutal in their unremitting honesty.

Musically the album harks back to their roots in the way that it effortlessly marries melody and volume, with Kim Scott's bass like an electrical pulse offsetting John Stanier's frenetic and powerful drumming. But this is no rehash – this is a great band at the top of their game. The subject matter may be bleak and the music merciless in its intensity, but Songs Of The Third And Fifth is once more a triumph because it ultimately comes across as buoyant rather than bruising. Magnificently uncompromising.