The album’s cover art is a photograph of a shattered egg exploding from the clenched fist of a crimson-nailed hand. The egg has been subjected to enough force to send the yolk skyward, whilst broken bits of shell remain trapped under the fingertip’s chipped nail polish. The whites shoot down or ejaculate through the knuckles, bypassing the arm’s strained tendons and pulsating veins.

It’s Blitz!: are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs giving you the ultimate hand-job or breaking your balls? Either way, you could conclude that the trio are challenging you to pick your corner: Love it or hate it but don’t insult us with mild mannered indifference.

The band’s statement of intent opens with a full-bloodied battle cry that’s going to drag you kicking and screaming to the disco. Karen O is ready to drive a strobe through your heart, as Nick Zinner forces you to watch his guitar burn on a funeral pyre lit by a mob of synthesisers baying for the blood of Fever to Tell’s art-punk-rock.

Zero’s rapid fire electronics pulse like a mini machine gun into Karen O’s cool vocal, “Shake it like a ladder to the sun, makes me feel like a mad man on the run.” Zinner dips into Studio 54 for some vintage disco effects, then busts the whole thing wide open with ballsy electro keys and a hyper-active high-hat. You’re given a moment to wipe the sweat from your brow before Heads Will Roll pulls you in to an early – œ90s rave. Miss Orzlek is there, “dripping with alchemy” as heavy-duty beats roll across the dancefloor and Zinner’s guitar revs-up to grind its way through the song’s underbelly.

Although Zinner is running amok with a veritable party bag of electronic effects, he’s fully aware the guitar is still necessary to underline arrangements that may not glitter quite so brightly once the sun makes an appearance. He does this perfectly on Softshock’s measured comedown. Chords are spun backwards, keys chug and harmonics chime, while Karen O proclaims that it’s a “shock, shock to your soft side.” It could be wafer thin but meat is added to the bones via Zinner’s muddy effects pedal and Brian Chase’s intuitive drumming.

It’s Blitz! may be a shimmering disco ball to Fever to Tell’s dirty boots, but the band are prepared to indulge those who still hold the debut close to their hearts. Dull Life’s lead guitar stalks Karen O’s clipped staccato across peaks and troughs that culminate in Zinner and Chase ramping up the noise to try and push Orzlek out of the frame. She lashes out in familiar fashion with wild cat yelps and a defiance that’s half-sung, half-yelled, taking command of the boys as she leads them back into the fray where “we can see the nightmare of your lives.”

It must be said that Dull Life is the only point where Karen O’s formidable stage persona is really evoked. If you prefer her unhinged and untamed, if you think the vocal oddities and primal tics are essential to Orzlek’s appeal, Dull Life may be the lone highlight of It’s Blitz!. Although Orzlek is as assertive and sexy as ever, there’s a feeling that she’s hemmed in by some of the album’s material.

The fact that nearly half of the album’s ten songs are given over to ballads may have something to do with it, and appropriately so. It’s doubtful Maps would have been quite so enduring if Orzlek had littered its heart-felt sentiments with a bucket load of shrieks and screams.

Hysteric sees her dreamily disconnected; cooing gently “suddenly you complete me” while Brian Chase punctuates with crisp refrains. She’s then sucked low down in the mix, chanting “hysteric” as the song spins head first into a bizarre Euro-pop finale. It has a gorgeous strangeness, but it’s disconcerting that the band seems to be stuck on repeat across three further songs that follow the same blueprint: start with something quiet and understated, add some other bits and pieces, then build to a dramatic conclusion.

Runaway follows the template, albeit with mournful strings, aching guitars and a stadium-sized finish. Skeleton reaches its climax courtesy of a military snare and strident effects, and although Little Shadow’s gentle acoustics show promise that the song will chart its own path, it actually just takes a little longer to reach the power ballad that’s waiting at the two-minute mark. Each song has enough conviction to give a firm yank of the heartstrings, but for such a large chunk of It’s Blitz! to be taken up with variations on the same theme you have to wonder if the band just ran out of ideas.

Although the violently erotic artwork and firecracker opening feels like a bombastic call to arms, it’s no guarantee you’ll feel passionately enough about It’s Blitz! to camp in either the love or hate corner. There are some brilliantly incendiary pieces here that aren’t afraid to quash preconceptions and expectations, but in equal measure there’s some adequate moments that have the potential to leave you cool at best (bored at worst).

It’s still an album worth spending time with, but whether It’s Blitz! delivers on the cover’s metaphorical promise is another matter.

It’s Blitz! is out 10 April on Modular Records.