Husband and wife duo Ryan Betschart and Rachel Nakawatase, aka Shrine Maiden from Los Angeles, have been destroying eardrums together and really gaining momentum over the last few years, particularly in a live setting in festivals everywhere . The new album continues their intensely noisy yet overwhelmingly beautiful trajectory, and it’s characteristically sonically overwhelming, often (perhaps reductively) referred to as “doomgaze”. I see it more as ambient experimental maelstrom music. But then, I’m a picky bastard. Regardless of attempted genre definitions, they’re exceptional musicians, with a genuine beauty/horror paradox within their sound, and true integrity.

‘A Storm At Sea’ layers in drones, swathes of swirling keyboard and bludgeoning guitar, and ‘A Heavenly Nature, An Earthly Nature’ swims in dissonance, akin to crawling out from a tunnel, only to emerge, blinking, to be further confronted with disorienting darkness. ‘Field Of Snow ‘appropriately builds into an aural avalanche. In direct contrast, the sinister waltz of ‘For Rachel’ is, if not comforting, somewhat softer and tender – a small reprieve from the colossal soundscapes elsewhere.

They’re not ripping up the rulebook by any means – sitting somewhere between early Mogwai, Sunn O))) and A Winged Victory for The Sullen – but when you’ve a yen for apocalyptic metallic beauty, this really hits the spot. As the world increasingly implodes, this sounds like the ideal soundtrack. What a glorious racket.