Mclusky, a fairly conventional three-piece with their tongues firmly in their cheeks for most of their career, whilst creating catchy but brutal riffs and spouting hilarious, obscure lyrics. Jarcrew, a whole different kettle of fish, jumping genres every 30 seconds but making it all cohesive enough by having it vaguely beneath their unique electronic/post-punk/ambient/etc/etc/etc style, who comparatively had a short career with one album (released twice) to their names and odd rumours of Jehova’s Witness drummers being the route of their demise (a very ‘Jarcrew’ way to end). The real surprise with this team-up, though, would be to see Kelson being restrained by having a bass guitar placed on him and not being able to roam venues like he did with Jarcrew, a role that was pivotal to the band’s well earnt live reputation.

Falco is the dominating force then; in sound Future of the Left have a more ‘clusky’ sound than a ‘Jar-clusky’ sound. But maybe that was never the aim in the first place. Instead the sound is really a lot more monstrous than either previously mentioned bands. Some riffs are powerfully slowly - with guitarwork sounding way more versatile than it did on Mclusky outings - lyrically things are still at the obscure Falco quality that we’re used to (“Better bovine than equine/Better hedgehog than porcupine...” or “Colin is a pussy/A very pretty pussy/A very pretty pussy cat”) and songs like ‘The Lord Hates A Crowd’, ‘Plague of Onces’ & ‘Adeadenemysmellsgood’ sound so hateful and energetic that it could make you cry man-tears of joy.

‘Curses’ is confident, angry and, ultimately, heroic. They even get away with using a synth for disco-stomping ‘Manchasm’ and a piano for album closing ballad, ‘The Contrarian’. Whoever put the brakes on courage didn’t press hard enough, and to our advantage this helps create a well-rounded album. It’s fucking solid. Miss at your peril!