Positively tuneful after the blunt assault on your eardrums that was 2007’s Hope For Men, Pennsylvanian Noise Rockers Pissed Jeans have added a good dose of Stoner Rock goodness to the formula for album number three. Toning down the hysterical near-insanity of previous releases in favour of a more considered, verging on technical rock attack, the band are still the perfect soundtrack to getting blind drunk and getting your head stomped on. For the first time, though, you might survive a booting; the band certainly upping the catchiness here and seemingly concentrating on the good times. As you might expect from their name, however, Pissed Jeans still focus on the slightly more disturbing elements of a night out on the town, and everything about the band, from Matt Korvette’s weary yells to the almost Sabbathian drive of guitarist Bradley Fry and bassist Randy Huth, simply screams of depression and bile at the world; attitudes that can only be cured with dangerous amounts of alcohol.

A pleasant surprise is just how good the songwriting is. Opener False Jesii Part II simply storms in, Punk attitude spitting in your face with a gloriously anarchic chorus and skilful instrumental interlude woven right in. “I could match you drink for drink... but I don’t want to!” yells Korvette, gleeful in his slothfulness, before the ominous ramble of Half Idiot falls into you and deliberately spills your drink. The four minutes of Dream Smotherer waver between Acid Bath grimness and raucous Hardcore energy, eventually collapsing into the slow-mo Doom of Pleasure Race. She Is Science Fiction sounds like something Queens Of The Stone Age may once have done after a heavy night of drinking, whilst the old-school Request For Masseuse is the closest that this band will ever get to a ballad (“Take both thumbs and dig them in/Stop my flesh from tightening”).

There’s not a bad track present. The Melvins-on-speed drive of Human Upskirt, the deranged love song of Lip Ring, the paean to lost hair that is Goodbye (Hair) – the longest track present, the seven-minute Spent, is gloriously sludgy and miserable, Dooming out at the start and dropping to just drums and vocals before plunging into you like a broken beer bottle in slow-motion – “I drank a cold glass of water but it didn’t satisfy” moans Korvette, here at his most emotionally brutalised. R-Rated Movie is almost psychedelic at first, before going wildly violent at the end and leading perfectly into Dominate Yourself.

What impresses most about King Of Jeans is the consistently dangerous atmosphere. You get the unceasing impression that the band really mean it, man, and every aspect of their alcoholic philosophy is as real as it is stated to be. It reminds me of an article I read recently about the increase in bladder ruptures amongst drunks who fall over in the street, the high amounts of alcohol in their systems masking the natural instinct to urinate. Well, Pissed Jeans will never have such a problem, taking the obvious if distasteful solution to the problem, and this attitude is what makes King Of Jeans such an enjoyable experience; the drunker you are the more enjoyable it is. Music for reprobates and pissheads, without a doubt, and excellent for it.