The opening track of Depeche Mode’s 13th album sends out a false alarm: Welcome to My World, with its flatulent synthesizer and by-numbers chorus, sounds worryingly like a great band finally running out of steam.

But without even a break to catch their breath, the trio are into Angel and all appears more or less right again. The bluesy edge that has often distinguished Depeche Mode from its synth-pop contemporaries returns, with the keyboards snarling like guitars and singer Dave Gahan adopting a pose that seems reminiscent of Jim Morrison or Nick Cave. Early verdict: few are better at this game.

The newfound momentum doesn’t hold for the album’s entire length, which is just under an hour. Two of the three tracks co written by Gahan and engineer Kurt Uenala, for example, lack the melody and direction to hold interest (only the slightly sinister, self-recriminating Secret to the End lands a bullseye).

The other songs, all written by Martin Gore, are reliably taut, for the most part – although it’s hard to figure out why the slightly plodding Heaven, with its well-worn chord progression, was chosen as the first single.

Ultimately – and stop us if you’ve heard this one before – this would have made an exhilarating 40-minute album. The control exercised by Gahan, Gore and Andy Fletcher is most evident in My Little Universe, which always seems, tantalizingly, about to erupt, but keeps abandon just out of reach. Later, they remind us that they can (almost) rock out with Soft Touch/ Raw Nerve, a burst of robotic garage that tips its hat to early Roxy Music. And what about that central guitar lick in Slow, which sounds like John Lee Hooker playing over an ambulance siren?

Thanks to Ben Hillier’s reliably crisp and brittle production, the dialogues with often damaged individuals gain immediacy as they unfold over percolating, insistent, icy keyboards. You don’t need a lyric sheet to connect with the intent behind the sexually urgent Soothe My Soul or the despair behind the opening salvo of the stately ballad The Child Inside.

“There is a darkness and death in your eyes/ What have you got buried inside?/ The shallow grave in your soul/ The ghosts that have taken control/ You really should have dug a little deeper there/ Body parts are starting to appear and scare the child inside away,” Gore sings on the latter track.

When they’re hot, they’re still hot. In a cold way.

Rating: ***

Podworthy: Slow