As soon as the bass and cymbals start up over cascading piano on the opening track you know exactly where on Crimson is going – big riffs. That said, the first big riff is so ferocious that is almost a surprise, a huge stop/start monster that doesn’t let up until the unusually rich vocals cement the fact that Alkaline Trio have become something rather more substantial than most American pop-punk. Steering somewhere between maturing-jokesters Blink-182 and dark, nail-polished AFI, Crimson is a non-stop barrage of widescreen punk complete with heavy themes and an occasional tendency toward strings and pianos. I’m going with chamber-punk for a newly coined genre.

This brutal opener (Time to Waste) manages to overshadow the rest of the album, which holds a fair few nondescript punk tracks amid more ornate offerings. These songs are unwaveringly tight, full of frantic hi-hats and close-knit harmonies, but honestly truly, every chorus sounds identical – which is fine for one-off listens, but it grows stale over the course of the whole album.

When Alkaline Trio expand their horizons, though, the results are more pleasing. Burn benefits from tricky stereo-effect guitars and artier riffage, while Back to Hell is aptly named with its scathing onslaught of chaotic chords.

The breakdowns, imperative in any American punk/hardcore/emo, are always impressive. Echoing snare and atmospherics elevate Settle for Satin from its bland first half, and Sadie distinguishes itself from the mire with a confessional female voice-over straight from the asylum. Much of the lyrical agenda is darkness, all nightmares and vampires and insanity; this works just fine, given that the phrasing and imagery is two cuts above the usual punk scrawling.

To the non-teenage, it all seems a little silly, an over-the-top offering designed to incite solo air-guitar in the living room and scowling at your parents. Alkaline Trio know this, though – “I fell victim to double suicide on your television / we heard our records backwards too many times” sings Matt Skiba in Fall Victim – and why begrudge them the opportunity to punk-rock-out when they seem at the top of their game? I really hope no one saw me skipping back to the start of Time to Waste and pretending I was thrashing along…