Hutch Harris writes two kinds of songs – “me” songs and “we” songs – and, for a scrawny thirtysomething indie-rocker, his way with the first person is spectacular. His commanding whine of a voice somehow manages to encapsulate the frustration and joy of anyone who puts the needle on a groove of a Thermals record.

Never afraid of big subjects and small-c concept albums, his band’s last three releases have tackled religion, evolution and relationships. Now, on sixth LP (and their first for Saddle Creek), Harris is ready to talk about death. Well, not quite death, but the psychology of killing. A big ask for a record that clocks in under half an hour.

Right off the bat, that short running time tells you that the band are getting down to business; no more the flights of (relative) fancy and extended instrumental passages that stretched through 2010′s underwhelming Personal Life, no sir. Opener ‘Born to Kill’ sets out the stall perfectly – no fuss, no mess, just some crunchy-ass power chords and a manifesto for an album set in stone: “I will never be done, I will always be hungry… AND IT KEEPS ME ALIVE!”.

‘The Sunset’ goes one better, a charging minor-chord assertion of power and guilt (key line: “now I feel free to kill, but I know my shadows, they follow me still, and they probably always will”) which makes for the record’s most thought-provoking moment. Meanwhile, the record’s downbeat closer ‘Our Love Survives’ gives the big reveal on the struggle Harris has been singing about all along; you can just imagine him as the leading man in some gory horror film coming back to reclaim his beloved, his shirt covered in blood, as he proclaims its opening line: ”Our love is true – it’s why we fight”.

As for that concept, it’s not exactly subtle; sonically and thematically, it’s a less-specific counterpart to 2006′s career-best The Body, The Blood, The Machine, which covered every angle of organised religion in the post 9/11 era. “Enemies” are everywhere in these songs, even though we never find out who they are, and Desperate Ground is swamped with its bloody, blunt us-against-them lyrical theme. It also makes you wonder if Harris, bassist Kathy Foster and drummer Westin Glass have spent the three years since Personal Life doing nothing but watch Game of Thrones.

Although it’s hard to picture any Thermal donning a suit of armour, ‘The Sword by My Side’ and ‘Faces Stay With Me’ have lyrics peppered with a strangely medieval undercurrent (let’s just say those faces he’s talking about might not even be attached to their respective heads any more), and ‘I Go Alone’, which seems to be about a lonely lovestruck vigilante, boasts the record’s most soaring chorus. Still, while the politically charged The Body… had lyrics that you always felt comfortable hollering back at the band in concert, thinking about the vague violence of Desperate Ground might make for slightly more awkward singalongs.

The best and worst thing about The Thermals is their love of repetition – not in a relentless grooving Fall-like way. This is straight up repetition-repetition-repetition; Hutch throws the same words, ideas and even whole verses across almost every song, all of which sound the f*cking same anyway. But that’s their charm as well, in a nutshell: Desperate Ground‘s pace never drops, and allows everything to seem instantly familiar, even though the record itself is relatively short on the killer choruses that liberally pepper their earlier work. It’s boneheaded indie rock at its most intelligent – or vice versa. The Thermals’ belligerent sound suits their wide ideas perfectly and, even if it makes you slightly afraid to cross their lead singer, Desperate Ground is another great demonstration of what makes this band one of America’s worst kept secrets.