If 2015's immaculate In Dream set a new, sophisticated electronic standard for Editors' brand of black-suited indie-rock, Violence flows seamlessly as its full-bodied sequel.
This time, there's even denser backdrops expanding the genre parameters (influenced both directly and indirectly by Fuck Buttons' Benjamin Power/Blanck Mass). The title track, for example, is four minutes of brooding relationship tumult that sprouts wings for another two, flying into the kind of nocturnal pulse Royksopp perfected in the mid-noughties. Likewise, Counting Spooks' first movement marches with military intimidation then bursts into a Berlin nightclub, stripping down and grinding against sweaty bodies in disco heaven, Tom Smith incanting "Holding it together, holding it together". The world is fucked; here's our catharsis.
There's nothing as emotionally destroyed as No Harm, but it would take a hollow heart not to shed a tear as Smith's marbleised baritone peels over a lonely piano in No Sound But The Wind, begging, "Help me to carry the fire / This road won't go on forever".
Magazine dives headlong into stadium-beating Coldplay territory, complete with "Aaah-ah!" chants, and while bombastically radio-friendly, is by far the most highfalutin they get here. But no matter. Violence delivers plenty of the right kind of punches.
