Whatever you feel about Editors’ particular version of indie art-rock (and they’ve always come in for appreciation and annoyance in roughly equal measures), you have to admire the risk the band have taken with this album.

They already had a decent-sized fanbase, two albums and a string of commercially successful singles behind them, so it would have been easy to put out another collection of the sort of guitar-based, radio-friendly songs on which they built their 2007 success, An End Has A Start. Lots of people would still have been annoyed with them, but their fans – and their label – would have been quite happy.

That’s not what they chose to do, though. Instead, they made In This Light And On This Evening, an altogether more unsettling, difficult and satisfying collection that draws its musical inspiration from various sources – experimental, drum & bass and old sci-fi movies, among others – to create a world that’s dark, god-forsaken and weirdly alive.

The title track opens the collection and sets the scene – “I swear to God I heard the earth inhale” runs the distorted cyber-vocal against an atmospherically charged electronic backdrop. We are in London, but a London transformed into “the most beautiful thing I’ve seen”. Then, around the three-minute mark, this strange and eerie place suddenly bursts into life with the sort of compelling rhythms, thrilling synthesizer riffs and big, intricate basslines that dominate the whole collection.

Bricks And Mortar is the second track, and it’s one of the biggest – dealing with war, the boy fated to be a soldier and endure wounding and death, plus, at the end, a tiny grain of hope – “I hope life is good for you” – like the last thing out of Pandora’s box. Musically, it has a range and power appropriate to such subject matter, with the understated drums and eerily modal opening motif leading on to massed choirs.

Papillon, the album’s lead single, comes next, and it’s another epic, this time talking about the non-existence of God and the inevitability of extinction. The track combines an irresistible beat, visceral bass and catchy keyboard melody with that oddly observant hook, “it kicks like a sleep twitch”.

The big, compulsive tracks keep coming, and so does the emphasis on the dark side – You Don’t Know Love follows a cold and loveless existence with cemeteries and synths; The Big Exit, with its ghostly opening and Bond-theme melody, looks back on a love lost with the passage of time; Like Treasure sets a strong, central vocal in a beautiful soundscape, while hinting at some ghastly crime – “you will keep forever, I will bury you like treasure”. Then there’s Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool – a track that’s just as odd as its name suggests, but with all the brilliance you want from the last big anthem on an album that’s full of them.

For variety, there are also some mellower moments. The Boxer, a narrative of urban loneliness and fear set against a quietly beautiful electronic landscape makes a lovely contrast with the grander-scale pieces, while the reflective closer, Walk The Fleet Road, with its folky humming chorus and violin effects, sends us home from the scary city we discovered in the opening track.

Not everyone will like this album – and even among committed fans there will be lots of people who will miss those delicious guitar riffs that were central to the band’s previous work – but it’s also possible that some others who never really got Editors before might just get them now.