On their self-titled debut, Wax Chattels put their own stamp on the lineage of arty yet rough-edged post-punk, touching on Suicide and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as well as the darker side of New Zealand's musical legacy along the way. To follow it up, the Auckland trio bring the different strands of their style together for an even bigger impact on Clot. Working with producer James Goldsmith and engineer Ben Greenberg -- who knows a thing or two about making noise from his work with the Men, Uniform, and Destruction Unit -- Wax Chattels give their second album a sound that's cleaner but also heavier. Where their debut felt like a recording of a particularly inspired practice session, Clot's sonic precision lets Wax Chattels target their onslaughts with better aim and bridge the gaps between post-punk, industrial, and noise seamlessly. On "Forever Marred," the din bassist/vocalist Amanda Cheng and keyboardist/vocalist Peter Ruddell whip up proves once again that this band has no need for guitars, while the thick, unrepentantly ugly churn of "Less Is More" lives up to the album's title. Clot's clearer sonics also let Wax Chattels' songwriting stand out, and they have even more to say than they did on their debut. They capture the breaking point the way few other acts can: particularly on "Efficiency," where Ruddell and Cheng intone "blood seeps between my teeth as I bite my tongue" over keyboards that sound like an alarm, and "Mindfulness" a sneering indictment of the energy wasted trying to accept things instead of fighting to change them. The songs Cheng takes the lead on give post-punk's quintessential alienation a dose of 2020s relevance. On "No Ties," she details her isolation as a first-generation Hoklo Taiwanese immigrant ("No friends/History/Not mine") over a smoldering bass line, and unleashes her fury in her native tongue on "Cede," where Ruddell's keyboards try -- and fail -- to match her piercing wails. The band's intensity reaches breathtaking levels on the glowering "An Eye" and the seething, paranoid standout "Spanners & Implements" and only subsides a little on the finale "You Were Right," which strikes a mood of grim finality rather than acceptance. A truly cathartic album, Clot reveals a more intentional incarnation of Wax Chattels that expresses all the different shades of frustration and anger with formidable eloquence.