A potentially career-defining album that's delivered with unimpeachable confidence and conviction.

Forget Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, musical comebacks are rarely executed as perfectly as this long overdue return from the Farmer Boys. It may have been fourteen years since 2004's 'The Other Side', but the cult German Metal outfit sound better than ever on a superb fifth record that gives their sonic identity a contemporary facelift, whilst enhancing all the attractive features fans know and love.

A bizarre conceptual oddity during the mid-nineties, Farmer Boys began their career penning lyrics about the dark and disturbing side of an agricultural existence. Fortunately, that approach was phased out some time ago and thankfully it doesn't reappear on the perfectly titled reinvention that is 'Born Again'.

Wisely ditching the outdated Nu-Metal, Doom and Goth tendencies from yesteryear, vocalist Matthias Sayer and the band have retained a strong element of Muse's hazy ambience to their song's simmering verses (without Matt Bellamy's constipated drawl) as well as the odd heavier, drop-tuned riff ('Faint Lines' and 'Fiery Skies'), and yet, both have been incorporated into a more mature, modern – somewhat polished – sound that isn't too far removed from Threshold and Dream Theater at their most conventional and direct.

Epic, dramatic, passionate, melancholy and aggressive, 'Revolt', 'Stars', 'Oblivion' and the tear-jerking ballad 'Isle Of The Dead' epitomise a record full of imperiously tuneful anthems that are set ablaze by lyrically and musically symbiotic soundscapes. That's not to mention a never-ending onslaught of world-class soaring hooks that boast a contemporary Melodic Metal edge which are uplifting, inspiring and more addictive than a chocolate cigarette laced with cocaine.

Combine that with slicing, dicing guitar riffs that possess an equally current Metal dynamism and you've got a hugely accessible listen that's bursting with immense performances from musicians who've come on in leaps and bounds. Sayer, in particular, is a revelation; less rough and ready than of old, his emotionally searing – and pleasingly clean – vocals offer an impassioned message of hope, salvation, rebellion and collective strength as he strives to find solutions to this terrifyingly fractious period we're living through.

Compared to the band's past work, everything about 'Born Again' is bigger, sharper, tighter and any other synonym you can think of to describe a potentially career-defining album that's delivered with unimpeachable confidence and conviction.

They may be lumbered with an increasingly ill-fitting moniker, but when the music's this good, who gives a Farmers Truck?!

Simon Ramsay