The United Kingdom’s greatest cult band Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats are set to return with their fourth full-length studio album The Night Creeper (September 4). In support of the release they will also be embarking on headline shows in December across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne following their recent announcement on Meredith Festival.

Recorded at Toe Rag Studios in early 2015 with engineer Liam Watson (White Stripes, Tame Impala, Electric Wizard), The Night Creeper finds the quartet in full-on death-tripping, third eye-widening mode. Here songs ooze louche evil over flesh-melting riffs that creep like hot magma bubbling up through the earth's crust at their own malevolent pace. This album is in no hurry to destroy you. But it will. It will.

In an age when the word is over-used, Uncle Acid are indeed a true cult. Everything they do is covert, their movements crepuscular, the loyalty they inspire fervent. Every sneering melody and every piece of artwork is loaded with meaning, designed to be pored over. Their press coverage is deliberately limited but doesn't prevent them selling out US tours or joining Black Sabbath at their personal request.

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats' breakthrough album Blood Lust (2011) was an homage to British Hammer and folk horror films of the 1970s, a candle-lit head-trip of withered hands, ritual knives and gallows ropes. Mind Control (2013) looked further afield, to the post-Charles Manson US for inspiration: Jim Jones dosing the Kool-Aid, Blue Cheer, Blue Oyster Cult, B-movie biker movies, war, Watergate, serial killers, and suicidal TV evangelists. Now comes The Night Creeper, their darkest journey yet.