Sometimes, when summer rays drift down from above and the sky is cloaked in blue, the discerning metal listener feels the urge to switch off the pummelled tones and furious tempos of norm. Cast against the fresh light of sun dancing in the background, juddering and callously wrought sounds born from a Nile album can seem incompatible, disharmoniously distant from the prevailing mood. The war caresses of Sodom, the guttural rants of Deicide, these wonderful purveyors of noise fit a purpose not aligned to the simple need for shimmering melody and decorous sing-song.

This is where The Fourth Season comes in. The fourth album (as if you had to guess) by Aussie prog metallers Vanishing Point delivers us some fifty minutes of sun-kissed delight, a collection of upbeat songs adorned with catchy choruses and consummate musicianship – all that good stuff we used to love.

Thrown on with little expectation, I was surprised and shocked to find an instantly likeable soundscape nestling under the grandiose bollocks of the album cover. Normally progressive metal numbers take a few listens to really gauge the quality – a positive and negative effect of an often complex and multilayered music – but Vanishing Point required no breaking-in period, no long nights spent sleepless trying to wrestle a concept to clarity, to map the contours of a sprawling 20-minute epic. No, instant gratification flows out from The Fourth Season. Simple structures underpin the coiled instrumentation, a linear trajectory running verse-chorus verse-chorus, dipping into solo breaks, before finally reprising the chorus. It’s a straight-ahead pattern, a welcome novelty, basic perhaps, but it’s not as if the Blotted Science album can’t be flung on at a moment’s notice to satisfy the need for wiry compositions and convoluted playing.

Prog metal, in many ways, but with a more direct approach.