It’s taken Mercy Arms a long time to come up with their debut album. They’ve been waylaid by troubles with major labels, inter-band divisions and the need to self-fund then self-release their first long-player. It would seem to many, then, that the band had missed their moment; that the zeitgeist that saw the group lauded as the best and brightest thing to emerge from Sydney for a long time had passed them by. It hasn’t. The band has come up with a debut offering of immense and epic proportions.

But it is, in all likelihood, not that the album that many were expecting the band to unleash. It’s missing several of the cuts that have become synonymous with the band – there’s no Shot Right Down, Quit Your Fooling, nor even likely single Say What You Say – and is instead a distinctly moody record, full of fascinating passages of sound and interesting bric-a-brac of sonic ephemera. The guitars of frontman Thom Moore and Kirin J. Callinan weave in and out and between each other, creating a mesmerising effect that’s utterly beguiling, while the rhythm provided by bassist Ash Moss and drummer Julian Sudek is supple yet steadfast and dependable.

There’s little doubt that it’s the combination of Moore and Callinan that makes the band – with the voice of an angel, Moore is hypnotising on the likes of Down Here, So Long, Caroline and the spellbinding Footsteps. He’s also capable of aggression on single Half Right and Speed, while Shine a Light Down finds Callinan adding a bizarre spoken word piece about a cat entering a red light district (or perhaps something far more sinister). It’s the one moment on this otherwise superb debut where the band’s ambitions overwhelm their abilities, and where they aim for something and fail to pull it off.

Recorded straight to tape with Tony Cohen in Melbourne, the sound of Mercy Arms is superb. Tightly wound and yet not quite claustrophobic, there’s enough space on here to find the likes of Firing Line augmented by piano in lieu of swathes of guitar. There’s little doubt that the band might not have been able to come up with something quite like this if they had unleashed it two years ago, striking when the iron was hot and the hype inescapable. Instead, the band has a debut album that completely sets them apart in the Australian market place, and that strikes a balance between beauty and malice. It’s the sort of album that, as a debut, not just offers promise for the future, but also delivers on it in the here and now.