It doesn’t matter that ...Trail Of Dead have signed to a major label. Erase their defensive “subverting the ‘system’ from the inside” quotes from your mind. Bollocks to the sell-out whingers. Don’t you know – AYWKUBTTOD are the most essential band in guitar music.

Um, they are. Promise. ‘Relative Ways’ is just a minor hitch in their blitzed attack on the world, wherein the Texans do what they’ve always done except a little less exhilaratingly than usual.

Only the terminally myopic could have failed to notice that recent album ‘Source Tags & Codes’, from which ‘Relative Ways’ is drawn, contained a few moments of Britpop tightrope treading which were, in no uncertain terms, woeful. Not that it was completely unexpected, pre-empted by regulation jet black Beatles fringes and a swagger not seen since 1996.

And although ‘Relative Ways’ is a slightly more old school ...Trail Of Dead tune, there is a nagging feeling they just might be mellowing as life becomes more comfortable. Are they pretentious? Are they takin’ the piss? Probably both. Are they getting fatter? Looks like it. But you can bet a splintered guitar that ...Trail Of Dead aren’t about to stop slaying audiences and instruments quite yet.