There’s a feeling of horror that crawls up my spine when I hear that a much-loved band’s next work is going to be a “departure”. It makes want to find them, sit them down, and ask: what’s wrong with the view from here? Look! It’s really pretty! Can’t you just make another record I love?

Of course, such conservatism is pretty pathetic and self-serving. Great art comes from constant challenge, constant change, right? (Kid A is the most obvious example.) But when Low promised they were going to “rock out” on 2005’s The Great Destroyer I felt a familiar panic rising. After all, if Low’s music were a photograph, it would be a field of snow. There would be a ruined house in the middle distance, and one lonely leafless tree. There would be footprints: two sets leading to the house, one set coming back. And I would really, really like that photograph.

But they didn’t listen to me, and went and rocked, and it was … patchy. A few great songs (’Monkey’, ‘Death of a Salesman’), a few good songs (’Silver Rider’, ‘When I Go Deaf’), and a few that were simply weak (’Broadway’, ‘Cue the Strings’). So the announcement that they were departing again was embraced chez Andi, until I realised that it didn’t necessarily mean they were catching a return flight.

I shouldn’t have worried. 2007’s Drums and Guns is easily the best record I’ve heard this year, and sits comfortably alongside the peaks of Low’s career, despite sounding nothing like them. The tempo has dropped back to the familiar almost-too-slow-to-bear march, but the songs are terrifyingly busy: scratchy samples, snatches of strings, the occasional programmed beat. Chaotic claustrophobia abounds, and at first it’s a struggle. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Low were trying to make a record without any instruments at all.

This is nonsense, of course. Variously, we are treated to glorious organ washes (particularly the gorgeous closer, ‘Violent Path’), clipped church bells, brooding bass, sinister guitar, and more. Throughout there’s brilliantly minimalist percussion, which envelops the whole record in an air of tension and (Iraq-inspired?) anger. And then there’s the voices that drive this record – the double-headed harmonious angel that is Alan-Sparhawk-Mimi-Parker – elevating it from an intriguing experiment in down-tempo song-sketching to something truly extraordinary.

Their beautiful voices and the ugly words they sing. To open with ‘Pretty People’, “All the soldiers are all gonna die / And all the little babies are all gonna die”, might strike some as unnecessarily depressing (and others as somewhat trite). But this is a record about blood, about loneliness, about death. About how violence suffuses everything we do, to each other and ourselves. In ‘Breaker’ (”My hand just kills and kills / There’s got to be an end to that”), and in ‘Always Fade’ (”The screams, the clutching of breast / So sorry ’bout the mess”), he is apologetic; later, in ‘Your Poison’, he is complicit, and almost zealous: “It has become my belief that your tongue is the weapon / You cut what you reap with your poison.”

There are lighter moments – the kind-of-funny-kind-of-silly ‘Hatchet’ and the lovely (if unsettling) ‘Dust on the Window’. But darkness abounds, until finally Alan Sparhawk kneels before his God – this is decidedly un-Christian Christian rock – and tells him, in ‘Murderer’, that he knows his game, and he will play. “Don’t act so innocent / I’ve seen you pound your fist into the earth / And I’ve read your book … So if you need a murderer / Someone to do your dirty work”.

This is a record that unfolds and keeps unfolding, revealing layers of intricacies – sonic and lyrical – that would be beyond the reach of most bands. It thrives on restlessness and a sense of barely-suppressed madness; rumours of nervous breakdowns and drug dependency seem accurate and telling. Yet out of this they have forged a triumph. After all, it would have been so easy to produce ‘just another Low album’, and I’m sure I’d have liked it. But Low appear to have gained a taste for travelling, and I doubt they’ll be staying here for long; thanks to this record, I’m no longer scared by the prospect.