The Stabs have a darkness and abrasiveness that could only originate from Melbourne. Dead Wood, their second album, is torrid, uncomfortable music. The content too, is far from chipper, as evidenced by a sample of song titles: No Hoper, Funeral Waltz, The Hated One and Cabin Fever. If you are after some sing-along melodies or hooks, you had best back away now and not tell a soul of what you’ve just witnessed here.

There is something endlessly admirable in a band so utterly convinced in their vision of music, which is one that so flagrantly flies in the face of what is generally acceptable within the form they are supposed to represent. The Stabs are less about songs and more about the violent expression of noise. Sounds are used offensively, with shrill, all-prevailing feedback and grating clamour onerously monstering any barely-recognised seedling of – œsong’ back down into the earth.

Pure volume is another oft used weapon in the three-piece’s arsenal – provided by amplifiers whose dials have probably never known an anti-clockwise adjustment; basslines that just plain puncture and a drum kit that needs to be sandbagged down to stop its components recoiling away from the thorough thrashing it’s receiving.

In the more restrained moments, the band create an ominous void, mostly filled with just a bubbling bass and strained, static air waiting to be ignited. The guitar riffs, when unleashed, are as sharp and devastating as an attack from a Tilly Devine henchman. Over it all, Brendan Noonan is still able to summon a scream that can be heard – if not understood – above the affray.

The Stabs are absolutely ferocious live, and their production on the album with Loki Lockwood has seen them barely lose any of that power. This is an album you have to judicially time your consumption of. Once you take the plunge, your settings and surrounds will become but an inconsequential background to the caustic assault on your senses. Fearsomely fantastic.

Dead Wood is available through Spooky Records.