These New Puritans offer few new thrills with a sound nearly purely derivative of the post-punk abrasion of The Fall and Gang of Four. Yet remarkably, they almost manage to be more pretentious than these obvious influences – a difficult feat when those influences are named after a Camus novel and a ‘gang’ of four leading Structuralist theorists: Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan. Worryingly live reviews of the New Puritans report that lead singer Jack Barnett also twitches and frets on stage like a second rate Ian Curtis, as if to complete the trinity of ubiquitous post-punk influences. Continuing the ideologically pure list of influences, the album was recorded with Gareth Jones, who has production credits for Wire, Einsturzende Neubauten and Liars. So at the very least there’s a guarantee of crunching bass, spiky guitars and drums that pound like factory machinery.

Beat Pyramid may be a brief thirty-five minutes, but there are far too many pointless tracks that do little other than filling time. Seven of the sixteen tracks last less than two minutes, not due to a driving, punk energy, but simply because they run out of ideas so quickly. The opening and closing pieces are particularly disposable, adding nothing to the record but a set of laughably trivial bookends of little more than ambient noise and the title of the tracks. The closing track I Will Say This Twi… cuts off so abruptly you could be forgiven for believing that your stereo has simply given up and refused to continue playing the record. Though in a move the band probably believes is oh-so-clever, the opening track is titled …ce I Will Say This Twice. Wow, it links up with the opening of the album to repeat infinitely – gosh ain’t they frightfully smart.

As if they’re auditioning for some new reality show called ‘Poser Indie Bands Say The Darndest Things’, there are also songs titled Infinity Ytinifni, C. 16th +-, £4, MKK3, 4 and H. Yet despite the layers of pretentious fancy dress there are some thrilling moments to be found when the band tire of their intellectual posturing and simply knuckle down to play. If you’ve been oddly eager to hear the Futureheads or Franz Ferdinand mixed by the Klaxons then En Papier is your lucky four minutes and fifty-six seconds. Colours is the most gripping song here thanks to its frantic pounding drum patterns and simplified approach. It’s a straight up assault that embraces the pop elements of the post-punk sound with out hiding behind a wall of slogans and musical theories. While Swords of Truth fizzes with menacing intent fuelled by chanted vocals, buzzing guitar and interruptions of brassy electronics.

But other attempts aren’t nearly as successful. Despite the sinewy tension of its opening bars, Numerology (AKA Numbers) is lyrically little more than a mathematical manifesto shouted by the most humourless of authoritarian apparatchiks. He’ll move up party ranks, but the track’s unlikely to move any party.

Swords of Truth may provide a description of much of the album with it’s lyrics about ‘slashing at the air, describing nothing’ echoing King Lear’s ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’ lament. Even as they seem to come clean about their music they still can’t resist referencing the tattered paperbacks strewn across the studio floor. Hopefully once they hand in their term papers on semiotics and existential literature they’ll become a stronger, more focused musical unit with less need to prove their smug superiority.