"This time, we lack a central theme – instead a myriad of subjects: wrestles with conscience, domestic frustration, awake-dreams, drudgery and even fishing drowning dogs out of canals.

"[2] On the release date for Worthless Music, Paul and Steven Morricone conducted an interview with Backstreet Media in which they provided a track-by-track breakdown of the album and commented further on the influences and factors around it.

It’s got the steady pace of someone attempting to trek across a wintery wilderness in snow shoes, scaling a few lofty musical mountains en route.

"[2] In a separate interview with Joyzine, Paul commented "I’d written and recorded my solo album Cruel Designs at the same time as we did this bunch of songs.

"[3] In Classic Rock, Julian Marszalek observed "thanks to a hermetically sealed approach that's seen The Scaramanga Six release their own albums, handle their own PR, shoot their own videos and book their own tours for well over two decades, the Huddersfield art-rockers are a band that’s easy.

The skew-whiff madness of "Horse with No Face" hits hard, "Death Mask of the Unknown Lady of the Seine" rocks and rollicks while pausing to take a detour into '60s spy-theme-music territory.

"[4] In RPM Online, Martin Chamarette noted that "after the loosely conceptual albums The Terrifying Dream and Chronica, the lead tracks "Horse with No Face" and "An Error Occurred" suggested a more feral, focussed sound this time round.

Here their sound is more direct than previously – opener "Big Ideas" driven along by chugging bass and Gareth Champion’s pounding beats before careering into one of their trademark soaring choruses.

Other highlights in the bumper fourteen tracks include "An Error Occurred", its full-on in-yer-face punk rock breaking down into what may well be a harpsichord solo, while "Kate and Cindy" is similarly urgent with its stabs of organ and Julia Arnez’s meandering guitar lines built for the alternative radio airwaves.

RingMaster went on to praise many of the album tracks including "It is the Face Wish How" ("(an) absurd wonder (with) haunting majesty and shadows"), "Dog Form" ("a beast of design and temptation... a post punk dissonance accompanying its bestial moves and insatiable creative desire and in every aspect, trait and inclination (proving) superbly addictive soon exposing our instinctive subservience to such devilry") and "Ipso Facto" ("simply glorious, a slice of the bizarre amid condemnation which creatively and emotionally becomes more bent out of shape... an electronic bossa nova hooked to alternative rock peculiarities, the track suggests the possibilities if Sparks thought they were Faith No More.

"[7] In The Ginger Quiff, Neilho27 called the album a "belter", adding "this is a thunderously good collection of powerfully strident hard-edged, while sophistically artfully concocted, post punk anthems.

Undoubtedly there is also something in the surname Morricone too, with a sweeping cinematic architecture to many of the songs here, none more so on the highly effective (and affecting) "Boy", a film soundtrack if ever I heard one, with such heartfelt lyrics.

Then you stop trying to clutch so much at influences and realise that rock music, for all its repeated cliches can offer something fresh and daring without being pretentious, nor succumbing to novelty.

Here the difference is that the band are truly independent, ploughing their own furrow and not caring two hoots for a nervous A&R person whining that they ‘don’t hear a single.’ If perhaps one or two tracks being left off might have made the album feel even tighter, it’s not to take back what I have said.

Even at their most pompous they are never far away from their post punk roots, and it seems the recent re-issue of the classic Hex Enduction Hour may have reawakened their love, as riffs are lifted respectfully and layered into the mix.

The band have always shown a passion and respect for the music that moulded them, from Scott 4 to Magazine’s theatricality to Cardiacs intensity, and have often thrown these influences into the heady mix...

Comparing opening track "Big Ideas" to "Björk's "Army of Me" played by Black Sabbath" Wood goes on to add "there’s an intentional atonality about Paul’s vocals as he spits and snarls his way through "An Error Occurred" like a really pissed-off Hugh Cornwell.

It is presented, and unfolds like a three-course meal at an exclusive restaurant, building from an entrée into a taste sensation of sax solos and beautiful tunes merging and popping on the taste-buds like space dust, before leaving you sated with the wafer thin mint of Paul’s dulcet tones.