Let’s get one thing out of the way: this isn’t the same Bloc Party as years passed. Not only have two original members left the band – drummer Matt Tong and bassist Gordon Moakes – but musically there’s a lack of anything similar to Silent Alarm. Infact, it’s pretty apparent from the opening track that there’s a distant lack of anything vaguely substantial, really. ‘The Love Within’ wants to be a dance track, but instead its lacklustre electronic staccatos flutter meekly over a tame 4/4 drum beat. Kele Okereke’s pining of “Don’t you want to get high?” could actually be very sharp satire, but sadly I don’t think it’s intended.

The complete absence of a weighty rhythm section is completely detrimental to Bloc Party’s new direction. This is a band that used to have its foundation in intricate and articulated drum beats, and it’s not present here. It’s not like they’ve gone completely the other way and immersed themselves fully in electronica either, which would be commendably self-assured. Instead, they’ve settled for neither and ended up with a scattered hotch-potch of an album where Kele channels his inner Seasick Steve on ‘The Good News’ as well as dabbling in some gospel vocals on ‘Only He Can Heal Me’. That quasi-religious theme is the only real connector of the LP, and even that has to be blared out in capital letters in the album’s title. ‘Eden’, at track 12, finally brings the beat that HYMNS has so desperately wanted and then desecrates it with hopeless lyrics. “Stand with me naked by the tree / Feed me poison apples,” sings Kele with about as much subtlety as Donald Trump at a Texan gun rally. It’s complete pseudo-house bollocks.

HYMNS doesn’t exactly scream finesse or cohesion – they’ve never been Bloc Party’s defining characteristics – but this time, it’s an especially messy final product.

Carl White