Total Control: Typical System review – exceptional leftfield synth-punk

These Melbourne weirdos' 2011 debut, Henge Beat, was a really exceptional leftfield rock record – one of the best to come out of Australia's underground in recent years, and there's a lot of strong competition in that area, not least from the members' own other bands – and this follow-up is perhaps even better. They're still in the business of shunting messy, fleshy guitars and steely, machine-dream synths together in terrifically unobvious ways here, and doing it with more depth and breadth than ever. There's the dense, metronomic punk chug of Expensive Dog; Black Spring's needling, alien boogie; and on Flesh War, a real goosebumps moment when singer Daniel Stewart's icy, deadpan boom breaks into a shockingly pretty synth-pop chorus. Postpunk, hardcore, krautrock and odd, spacey lounge-jazz are all sucked up and bent brilliantly out of shape over the course of an album that's abrasive but accessible, awkward but assured. Properly special stuff.