Porcupine Tree, renowned in rock music for their dense, cinematic albums, have completed their best and boldest work to date. Ninth studio album Fear Of A Blank Planet is set for release on April 16.

The frenetic, finger picked opening guitar riff delivers listeners into a 51-minute masterpiece of a record, modeled, in lead singer Steven Wilson's words, "on those great old LP albums of the ‘70s." It's a starkly beautiful elegy on the numbness, apathy, and isolation brought about by a 21st century cocktail of television, sex, prescription drugs, video games, the internet, terminal boredom, and subsequent escape. The character in the title track muses that "In school I don't concentrate / And sex is kinda fun / But just another one / Of all the empty ways / Of using up a day."

The six songs blend seamlessly one into the next, a symphonic arrangement of metal guitars, synthesizers, strings, fat bass lines, and Gavin Harrison's virtuosic drumming. Wilson's earnest vocals alternate between floating above the instruments and ripping right into the heart of each track. Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson contributes a guitar solo on Anesthetize, while Robert Fripp (King Crimson) provides the soundscapes on Way Out Of Here.