The music of the full band (two guitars, two violins, cello, contrebasse and drums) has grown louder, looser, full of spittle and tears. On 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, riffs are the backbone more than ever. Anchored by new drummer Eric Craven (ex-Hangedup), the band works its slow build and burn with newfound patience, sinuousness and ferocity. Whether methodically framing walls of sound over the four-on-the-floor punk dirge of "1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound" or exploding in sheets of free noise and melody on "Black Waters Blowed", the band has never rocked harder and has never sounded more determined, desperate and driven.

The recording, undertaken at the newly renovated Hotel2Tango facility in Montréal and Co-engineered by Howard Bilerman and Radwan Moumneh (who is also the band's live sound person), ups the ante considerably, with crackling guitar crescendos setting the pace for dive-bombing swirls of strings, while Efrim's voice rasps and wails words of worry, hope and fury throughout. The band's hallmark group vocal passages are positively spine-tingling.