‘Occult Rock’, the third album by the Paris’ three piece Aluk Todolo, demonstrates such a mastery of the hypnotic properties of the stubbornly repeated groove that this double disk set of stripped back, dark psychedelia travels swiftly by in a deliriously uncertain time frame that seems so much smaller than its eight tracks, almost all over ten minutes long, should logically allow. Largely, this is down to the rhythm section of bass player Matthieu Canaguier and Antoine Hadjioannou on drums: having previously exhibited their unrelenting talents with the simple psyche meets punk of Gregory Raimo’s Gunslingers, they developed a slow, metronomic meter, a kind of half-speed motorik beat, that can be found across all earlier Aluk Todolo releases. This eerie, ritualistic undercurrent provided the perfect path for Santidas Riedacker’s blackened guitar noise to follow, leading to a harrowing street of haunted houses filled with rusty scrapes, wails and groans. But, ‘Occult Rock’ somehow widens the palette to take in a wide array of kosmische and post-punk vibes, while remaining tightly focussed and even more beguiling than before.

The opening piece prepares the room with a relentless shower of tremolo-picked, blast-beaten pummelling, perhaps waving goodbye to Aluk Todolo’s black metal roots, the three members having originally worked together as Diamatregon, a much more formulaic but nevertheless affecting force that still gets resurrected now and then. Here though, the intensely burning energies are so furious the sound almost becomes static before the torrent turns vaporous to reveal psyche elements forming out of the chaos.

But it’s ‘Occult Rock 2’ that truly sets the ball rolling to demonstrate their insistent ingenuity: the cool and confident swagger of its mean and measured beat, more complex, yet more in keeping, with the metronomic rhythms of their previous releases, is joined by a crunchy, deep doom-filled riff to provide a stark contrast with the opener’s frenzy that, not for the last time, sends narcotic ripples of relief. But this most addictive of combinations is soon overtaken by a fast-paced, film noir chase scene of stealthy guitars set to prog as they ever so gradually build into an explosive dénoument. Despite a few subtle reprises of the earlier triumphant riff we’re left hungry for its return, but denied the fix until the very end of disk two when a similarly crusty crawler is gradually fleshed out to form a dark, ecstatic closing theme.

In between, the circular rhythms are often much faster than previous releases: ‘Occult Rock 3’ describes a dark forest filled with guitar howls and moans until, losing nerve Blair Witch-style, the bass takes us running in panic; or there’s the downright danceable bouncing groove of ‘Occult Rock 4’ that propulsively paces across a dim desert of undistorted twang with feedback whistling on the wind, the heat gradually rising to fry the elements: the bass getting grittier, the drums hitting harder while arcs of molten guitar spurt skyward.

Continuing the ‘more earth ritual than space ritual’ feel, the second disk opens in an orchestral fashion onto a heads down flange-filled psyche wig-out; whereas, the second half of ‘Occult Rock 6’ reduces to just a night-driving drum and bass, the latter’s refrain dropping lower and lower as buzzes from an amp socket describe rubble obstructing the road. And ‘Occult Rock 7’ accelerates even further, getting surprisingly close to a collision course between Sonic Youth and Can before bursting into a molten acid meltdown.

But this is no mere fusion of eclectic tastes in heavy rock. Whereas their previous releases sought to unnerve through wayward experimentation, seeing the trio record in caves and conceptualise about alchemy and solar eclipses, this feels like a definitive, refined statement of their pooled experiences that lacks neither lo-fi ‘true’ Black Metal production values nor studio trickery, yet sounds rich and alive, fervently focussed with a physical impact both intoxicating and liberating. Unusually, this year has seen several great and unashamedly rock releases from Swans’ The Seer to Godspeed’s Allelujah!..., but Occult Rock might just eclipse them all.