Scott Walker’s career reads like a tragic fairytale of unwanted pop superstardom and the artistic backlash that follows. Retreating away from the spotlight he shared with his Walker Brothers in the '60s, Scott’s solo material became darker and even standoffish, his persona more reclusive and distant. It also came infrequently, at the speed of an album a decade since the mid-'70s. With Bish Bosch, the interminably bleak crooner continues the blacker than black causeway mapped on his previous two LPs—1995’s stark urban portrait Tilt and 2006’s disturbing and primal The Drift.

But this is Walker at his most complex, both lyrically and musically. Opener “See You Don’t Bump His Head” pummels through its abstract narrative with an industrial-grade pulse and manic nightmare demeanor that realizes the foiled beauty of haunted, violent classics like Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” or Throbbing Gristle’s “Discipline." Working with a varied toolbox of instruments including everything from standard guitar/drum/bass to knives and raw slabs of meat, Walker takes the listener through a relative slaughterhouse of sound.

“Epizootics” sees Walker in a surprisingly light and dynamic mood, shuffling along with foreboding hand percussion, Portishead’s haunted aura, and Kubrickian scenes of madness. Album centerpiece "SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)" is a 21-minute suite of difficult sounds and unsettling passages. This is the essence of Scott Walker: don’t be afraid of the dark.