Starting again is never easy. It takes guts, determination and force of will to move out of the shadows of yesterday. But this is precisely what British rock band The Mysterines have done. Their ferocious new album, Afraid of Tomorrows, burns the past to the ground and builds something brand new out of the rubble.

Formed in Liverpool, The Mysterines – frontwoman Lia Metcalfe, drummer Paul Crilly, bassist George Favager and guitarist Callum Thompson – have undergone a radical transformation over the past few years. Fresh with new purpose and reinvigorated from songwriting sessions while secluded away in the countryside (in between playing to 60,000-strong crowds while on tour with the Arctic Monkeys), the band are now about to release the best music of their career. “We can feel the difference with this album,” Metcalfe says. “These songs show how far we’ve come. We’ve grown up a lot.”

Testament to that is the album’s blistering first single “Stray”, a superb slice of grunge-rock. “What a drag it is,” Metcalfe drawls. “Look what you’ve done now/ You’re not the kind to make real promises.” Just as you grow accustomed to that slow build of tension, the song explodes. “We’re stray,” Metcalfe sings in a she-wolf howl, over frenzied percussion and the shiver and snarl of the guitar. “We’re stray.”

“Stray” is a warning shot. The menacing instrumentation speaks to the song’s theme of lessons that are learned too late, and how the wrong path can at first be made to look so beguiling. It’s a venture down dark alleyways and deserted streets, all the while glancing back over your shoulder and wondering if something really did just move in the gloom.

Much of the album is steeped in this paranoia and fear. “Tired Animal” is loaded with strange, erratic sounds – resentment lingers in the air. Many of Metcalfe and Crilly’s songwriting sessions were held in picturesque locations around England; this particular track was borne out of a bitterly cold rehearsal room near the Liverpool docks. “It was not a safe place to be by any means,” Crilly says, grimacing at the memory. “It was so cold – it was the worst!” But from it, Metcalfe jokes, came their “Mozart moment”, arguably the most experimental The Mysterines have ever been.

It’s certainly a far cry from the furious, thrashing energy of their critically acclaimed Top 10 debut, Reeling, which was championed by titles including The Independent, NME, DIY, Spin and The Line of Best Fit. Produced by Grammy-winner Catherine Marks (Boygenius, Wolf Alice), the 2022 record thrived on a very literal kind of teenage angst, at the same time drawing on Metcalfe’s imagination for its narrative story-telling.

“With the first record, a lot of it was narrative-based and quite naive because we hadn’t experienced as much as we have now,” Metcalfe explains. “We were playing how we thought we should play, as kids, whereas with this, we’ve injected more of our actual influences into the work.” Lyrically, too, she has more to say: “It’s not as fictional, although there are still things I keep hidden behind closed doors.”

The lived experience in Afraid of Tomorrows shines through, in the skill of the band’s playing, their confidence, and the wary/weary tone of Metcalfe’s delivery. This is never as evident as on “Another Another Another”, the intro for which she sings as if sedated. “You said the clock is only ticking if you’re listening/ So I just close my eyes and try to forget it,” she intones. As the song builds, so does her rage. “I try my very best/ But I just can’t forget it,” she seethes, beneath a bruised storm cloud of a bass line.

“I was in a bad place when I wrote that one – I was really sad, and I felt like I needed to get it out, like something stuck in your throat,” Metcalfe recalls. “After I wrote it, I felt alright – there was definitely something therapeutic about it.” Written in the bathroom of her mother’s house, the song speaks to the fatigue we’ve all felt upon being trapped in an all-too familiar scenario.

“That’s probably a recurring theme through the writing process,” she says. “Paul watched me go through it – him being there for the whole thing while we were writing was important.” Indeed, the sadness bleeds into the instrumentation but, so too does Metcalfe’s fury and, towards the end of the record, her hope. “There’s a gorgeous build – it starts off mellow,” Crilly points out of “Another Another Another”. “I also think production-wise, John [Congleton] nailed it. I think he liked it because it’s quite dark.”

The band spent a month recording the album with Congleton – the Grammy Award-winning artist, producer, mixer, and engineer – at his brand new studio in LA. “We were the first band to record there,” Crilly says with a grin, describing the producer as a “genius – he’s calm but intense at the same time, and his knowledge of music is just mind-blowing”.

“And he’s such a creative,” Metcalfe adds. “Obviously with his history of producing, it was quite intimidating… he’s worked with some of our favourite artists. He’s a big deal.” Congleton returned this respect in kind, clearly drawn to The Mysterines’ dark, brooding sound that he recognised from previous collaborations with The Murder Capital and St Vincent, along with heart-on-sleeves songwriting akin to artists such as Bill Callahan or Phoebe Bridgers.

We hear Metcalfe’s imagination fly on album opener “The Last Dance”, which tells the tale of a person who falls in love with a porcelain mannequin and longs to dance with them. “I suppose it’s an analogy for what loneliness can do to you,” she says. “Once you’ve exhausted all the dark alleyways of drugs and alcohol, you end up reaching for something to connect to that isn’t real.” She whirls around and around, propelled by a blistering guitar solo and thunderous drum beats. “If only you could take my hand,” she cries.

Afraid of Tomorrows is the perfect frame for Metcalfe’s extraordinary voice. Like no one else on the British rock scene, she can switch suddenly from a lascivious purr to a hair-raising yowl, the love-child of Courtney Love and Karen O. “I strike a match to get out of it/ You drag me back for the funl of it,” she yelps on the thrilling “Sink Ya Teeth”. One of the last tracks written for the album, it shows the band at the height of their powers, emulating an LCD Soundsystem danceability.

Perhaps the most impressive part of the record is how much it demonstrates the band’s colossal ambition, whether on the bristling “Hawkmoon” or the surprising, poignant title track. “I think it’s easy to look back and feel judgemental about your younger self, but we’re past that now,” Metcalfe says. “We feel like we know who we are as a band.” And with an album like this, they’re ready to take on the world.