As the doors slide back on the instantly constrictive lift of ’Intro’ and a strange throbbing reverberation fires up as you begin to descend to God knows what floor, you get the sense that this new album is going to be a pretty extraordinary ride.

Yes, London’s Chrome Hoof are no run-of the mill collective. They are unclassifiable, unpredictable and wickedly unhinged. Originally a side-project vehicle for a pair of maverick brothers, they are now a, reportedly extra-terrestrial, ten-piece orchestra (although they vary in number when interplanetary travelling) with a couple of albums knocking about in the boot of their UFO.

The first spoken words of Crush Depth are pure comedy gold – “What section am I in?” It’s the very question that flashes across your mind as you head inexorably towards your own personal pressure threshold. How clever of them to always be one step ahead; how classy of them to help lighten the mental load, so preparing you for the mighty ruts and hillocks of this overtly psychedelic and resplendently proggy blend of jazz, disco, electronica and rock.

Never a band afraid to resort to using a distorted or childishly flippant vocal style (Lola Olafisoye has a tendency to sound a bit like Cyndi Lauper or Toni Basil on acid) or to scattergun the listener with short bursts of keyboard or hammered strings and skins (any sense of rhythm is split asunder with seemingly random soundless gaps), Chrome Hoof may, at first, seem to solely focus on creating sugar-rushing toddler-friendly music – spasmodically flickering blasts of audio adrenaline designed to stimulate the senses into overload.

Both ‘One Day’ and ‘Citadel Expires’, replete with multi-segmented verses, blitzkrieg bass and rainbow vocals that follow a pattern before abandoning it like confetti, are dangerously subversive and challenging. You must also prepare yourself for the horror of hearing the band send themselves up with the kind of ridiculously cloying in-jokes that hide within the fatuous ’Numbers’ or ‘Deadly Pressure’ – the wizened narrator clearly delivers his lines with his tongue firmly rammed inside his cheek. Thankfully, the intensely-layered and vibe-heavy seven minutes of ‘Sea Hornet’, the discotheque glam of ’Vapourise’ and the bleeding grunge of ‘Third Sun Descendant’, with it’s solid, battering ram groove, go a long way to making their music, as a whole, seem far more palatable than it actually is.

There is an ever-present sense that Crush Depth is a creation by a band merely ticking boxes to appease the avant-garde among us; a band being abstrusely curious for mere curiosity’s sake. I doubt, sincerely, that this is the case, but such is the vast sprawling nature of the content that a lingering element of doubt still hangs heavy over the more depraved tracks. Admittedly, it’s not an album that will get played often in private, but it is one that is bound to get aired in the presence of friends and that is it in a nutshell. Lovers of dynamic and unique music should definitely get a piece of Chrome Hoof, but it is recommended that you try before you buy.