‘Brainwashed’, the second full-length from Sheffield’s While She Sleeps, is not just an album. It’s a mission statement. It’s the culmination of what the band’s five members – vocalist Loz Taylor, guitarists Mat Welsh and Sean Long, bassist Aaran McKenzie and drummer Adam Savage – went through in order to make it, a physical manifestation of pure triumph in the face of adversity. It’s an album that got made both in spite of and because of the things that threatened to prevent that happening – serious trouble with Taylor’s vocal chords that required two bouts of surgery and which essentially delayed the making of the record by a whole year. Suffice to say, for everyone involved, the fact that ‘Brainwashed’ is – almost – finally here, is a both a big relief and huge cause for celebration.

Perfectly poised to enable their cult success to power into mainstream consciousness, ‘Brainwashed’ was recorded by Carl Bown (Trivium), mixed by Colin Richardson (Bullet For My Valentine, As I Lie Dying) and mastered by Grammy Award winner Ted Jensen.

The album’s twelve songs are a terrifying force to be reckoned with, a barrage of belligerent sound that straddles and combines a variety of genres the band would prefer you to just call “alternative rock”. Musically, it’s a sophisticated step up from their ‘This Is The Six’, their 2012 debut full-length, one that’s catchy and confrontational in equal measure.