A phrenology bust. Orthodox Christian icons. Fat Man’s nuclear destruction over Nagasaki. The trinkets and relics that adorn the cover of Erotic Secrets of Pompeii‘s debut LP Mondo Maleficum are just some of the many artefacts in the band’s cabinet of curiosities, a trove of disparate musical hues, mythological esoterica and an obsession with the end times all to be discovered in their art-rock museum of oddities.

Offering a distinctly theatrical flourish to the rich, musical climate currently thriving in Bristol, 2022’s Trash Jugular EP lifted the veil on their vaudeville post-punk, deftly balancing kaleidoscopic density with punchy hooks capturing prog’s lofty ambitions entirely within three-minute pop songs. Taking their aural and thematic blitz to a greater depth of cabalistic flaunt, ESOP conjure a dizzying swirl of confounding surreality and “apocalyptic art rock from the forbidden zone”.

Clashing antagonisms wrestle fractiously at the heart of Mondo Maleficum‘s restless energy, the cautionary tales of rapture and Armageddon also lie a gleeful cynicism, like an impromptu party’s panicked hedonism in response to an impending meteorite. Album opener ‘Osiris at the Large Hadron Collider’ scores Egyptian gods and black hole anxiety with an onslaught of angular guitar attack guided by a potent distressed drama that keenly establishes the record’s troubled yet decadent strut. ESOP deftly reaches into further sonic contradictions. ‘Crocodilian’ wields The Downward Spiral‘s eroded guitars with a hambone juba that’s saved from falling flat on its face by frontman Thomas Hawtin’s unabashed embrace of the absurd within his prog-punk showmanship.

Listing artists from Dali, David Cronenberg, and Robert Mapplethorpe as their influences, visual and cinematic direction constantly guides Mondo Maleficum. Lynchian lounge mystery hovers all over ‘Tenderness Has Failed Me’, an expert suffusion of cavernous keyboards fogging up Julian Port’s jagged bass, while ‘Bad Weather at Beachy Head’ spikes 70s sci-fi with Leone’s Spaghetti Western on the forlorn nod to Britain’s top suicide spot. Like Roxy Music before them or London art-poppers HMLTD, ESOP’s multi-medium inspirations are littered throughout their music and video work, their lyrics opening new doors of creative discovery in art history and mythology earnestly but never pompously.

Artistic literacy never obscures accessibility. A sincere reach for ‘classic rock’s’ enduring appeal fuels the thrilling ‘Venus Ascending’, Tom Hackwell’s soaring guitar solo possessed by the spirit of ‘Comfortably Numb’, and a detour into 00s indie informs ‘Faustina Filmed in Psychorama’, albeit digested in their uniquely skewed fashion. ESOP have a masterful gift for balancing theatrical instability within familiar musical hues and flavours.

Few debut albums are as confident and well-realised as this. A sonic reliquary of punk bombast and proggy realms that astounds and startles like a feverish circus ring mastered by Mr. Kite, Mondo Maleficum is an LP that bristles with red-blooded energy and apocalyptic flaunt, a Pandora’s Box lying in wait ready to unleash pandemonium.