It’s been just over a year since Jackson Reid Briggs & The Heaters released their last album It All Comes Down and not much has changed, but for the better. With Hammered, the band has built upon the raucous rock sound that we’ve come to know them for and these nine songs hit hard.

The album was recorded at Bakehouse Studios in a mere day, and the template is simple but so effective (as all excellently played pub punk should be). We are led into each song by thrashing guitars before Briggs unleashes his snarling vocal above the immense noise, descending then into an intense fuzz - Hammered is the sound of a band who wholly know the music that they want to play and how they want to play it.

Hammered is - to not put it mildly - an onslaught. The band bombard us with their wall of noise, battling guitars and dizzying drums making it no surprise that Briggs’ vocal often sounds distinctively strained in its attempt to be heard. There is no let up for the listener, the energy constantly at a feverish pace. The LP is so raw and raucous that it could be one of those rare releases to match its live performance for vitality.

And it doesn’t take long to indulge in the album before it becomes obvious that The Heaters are spiritual successors to The Saints - their intense pub-punk bears uncanny similarities to that iconic Australian band. Briggs boasts the same knack for constructing a great interrupting chorus. Songs like ‘Hide Away’ and ‘Always Takes Time’ are thrust with the sort of melodic chorus that demands to be shouted and screamed at the same time by its audience. Elsewhere, the album’s middle ‘In The Red’ is a shaking and brooding tune, Briggs’ vocal angrily echoing the title as the instrumentation picks up speed.

The band are recently returned from a month-long tour of Europe and it would not be surprising to discover that their welcome burst of Australian rock was well-received on that continent - Hammered will be released via Beast Records over there. ‘You’ve Got It Now’ is the kind of unabashed punk that rocks anywhere in the world, a song coming in well under two minutes but somehow still feels shorter such is its frenzied atmosphere.

For an album called Hammered, the connotations are obvious. This is the kind of unrelenting pub punk made for a sweaty and drunken night, preferably at a packed dive bar; that gig where the assault of sound will spill into the audience and floor just as much as the schooners will. And it’s not a shock that the album doesn’t close on a quieter note - ‘It Was Down’ drips with attitude, its menacing drum beat driving beneath Briggs’ hoarse howling, a befitting end.

The album is out via Grubby Publications today in Australia and - for those curious to see just how harder The Heaters can sound in person - it will be launched at the Old Bar on the 6th of March with Future Suck, Romero and Shove also playing in the evening.