To save you a trip to wikipedia, Havilah is an ancient locale mentioned in the same breath as the Garden of Eden in Biblical times, famous for its abundance of gold. The Drones latest album of the same name also has an abundance of gold, but of the lyrical and musical variety.

You get the feeling that The Drones are destined to be – if not already most of the way to being – one of Australia’s really important bands. The type that a fair few years down the track will be described glowingly and gushingly with the utmost reverence and lauded for their influence, if not their lavish success. You couldn’t really claim they are “underrated” though, with the band receiving the inaugural Australian Music Prize in 2006 for their second album Wait Long by the River… and getting a good few critical nods in their direction for their third album Gala Mill. This will no doubt continue with Havilah as the band have produced another intensely stirring and bewitching album.

For this record The Drones singer and songwriter, Gareth Liddiard, decamped to an isolated mud brick hut in rural Victoria to write songs over a few months in early 2008. After rehearsing the new material with the band the resulting songs were then recorded in an intense two-week period with the help of Gerling’s Burke Reid as producer.

The fact that the great bulk of The Drones music has been recorded in isolation and largely free from external trends and influence contributes to its unique intensity and tone. The ten songs range from the bristling burst of frustration that is first single The Minotaur to the sprawling apocalyptic dark-folk of the eight and a half-minute Luck in Odd Numbers.

There is very much a folk-ish storytelling aspect to the album – Liddiard creates characters and circumstances that allow for the unraveling of personal narratives within his songs. In most instances the music is subdued and restrained with the focus on Liddiard’s voice and lyrics; the songs sparsely signposted with acoustic guitar as the band bubbles away beneath.

That said, tangents of jarring noise arise considerably throughout the album reflecting or emphasising some sort of internal personal turmoil or conflict such as the maddening descent of sound conveying the impending divorce of The Drifting Housewife. Liddiard’s voice for the most part is a moseying nasal drawl – yet it unleashes in a fierce sneer on I Am the Supercargo, another Drones song scoured from the footnotes of world history, this time concerning cargo cultist John Frum.

The Drones seem to have harnessed the raw musical power of their early days and are able to selectively employ it for emphasis as opposed to its inclusion as one bludgeoning mass. On Havilah, Liddiard’s song writing has evolved to offer a compelling and questioning view of the world and the tour-hardened band intuitively flesh the songs out. Like its gestation, the album is a compact smouldering self-contained burst of sound and one that will only be even greater experienced live.