There‘s a rare breed of album that totally envelopes you in its sound from beginning to end, encasing you in its grubby claws and tightens its grip when you try to move away. You might not even want to go there, but something pulls you towards it. A thick dirgy sludge of noise, so gloomy, so claustrophobic that you struggle for air while listening to it, so bereft of any light, each time you press play it’s like the sun has been extinguished.

Transatlantic Oklahoma based four piece Colourmusic have threatened to do this twice, on their 2008 debut F, Monday, Orange, February, Venus, Lunatic, 1 Or 13 and 2011′s My _____ Is Pink. Their third album, May You Marry Rich, is the sound of them finally going through with it – it’s an album rich with layers of intricate noises that sometimes smash you in the face, and at others times show how adept they are at subtlety, with many textures only apparent after multiple listens.

Throughout the album, they purge the metronomic beat of kraturock, the feminine beauty of shoegaze, a sordid kind of psych and the fetid corpse of grunge. They kick the shit out of each of these sounds and piece it together with the aid of computers.

The snarling bombast of “Dreamgirl 82” – essentially a rewrite of “Rock On” by David Essex remixed by Secret Machines – and “Audacity of Hope” are sludgy desert rock songs, full of swagger and clad in black. “Overture” and “Rendezvous with Destiny” are beasts of noise, driven by the kind of ferocious hell bound drumming you’ll previously have thought only John Bonham could manage. The mercilessness of the drums threaten to run ahead of the rest of the band, but the sound of the rest of them trying to keep up the pace with their weapon of choice as if the damn thing is on fire gives these tracks an irresistible itchy urgency.

“Satyricon” takes a sampladelic hip hop approach, with processed drum patterns reminiscent of DJ Shadow’s early work and vocal “ooh”s sampled and stretched throughout. Halfway through, live drums are added and the effect is ear devastation; a wash of bleak synths and a tragic sounding guitar line are all put together in a way that will have you grinding your teeth at the outcome.

“Silvertape” is an ice-cold synthgaze ballad, showing off a tender mode generally kept to one side. Being surrounded by such musical devastation makes this even more effective, Ryan Hendrix croons “This is the day, to celebrate, waiting here for someone, I won’t let you down again”, all lines sung with total conviction. Hendrix’s vocals tend to be hidden down in the mix (when they’re not, strains of a young Ozzy or Perry Farrell can be heard) and heavily reverbed, used as an additional strand of instrumentation. Much in the way of JN from Hookworms -whose Pearl Mystic from last year could be a more organic, snottier younger brother of this release – Colourmusic would rather let the machines do the work.

Whereas their previous albums had a tendency to suffer from too many ideas not being reined in, May You Marry Rich is a fully focussed album of impressive scope. For all the recent (and very much warranted) praise for albums from The War of Drugs and Wild Beasts, May You Marry Rich is something all of its own; it has a sense of danger and a distorted outlook that is extremely alluring. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.