You might have heard Euphonic before. You might have seen them last year, when they were doing regular laps of the nation's venues in support of their three singles – which, while the Radioheads and Nine Inch Nails of the world were pondering the new music model, they were releasing as free downloads. Perhaps you'd seen them in earlier incarnations, releasing critically-acclaimed EPs or touring rigorously around Australia. It's worth knowing these things, because otherwise you could be forgiven for thinking the band had appeared, fully formed, out of nowhere.

Nothing could be further from the truth: so obsessed with music were founding brothers Paul and Bret Carpenter that their jazz-musician father allowed them to leave school at the minimum legal age on the condition that they dedicated themselves to the band full-time. "This band's gone through some ups and downs, big time," confides frontman Paul. "It took a while to get the right people to do the job that you want done. You have to have musicians with the right mindset, to write music beneath your lyrics and build an emotion there."

It's a point worth making because DROWNING FOR DAYLIGHT is one of the most solid, snarling, passionate local albums to emerge in a long time. While the rest of Australia's Next Big Things were sorting out the paperwork on their jeans-brand cross-promotions, Euphonic were toiling in the studio under the watchful eye of Dean Turner – aka Dean Dirt, bass wrangler with Magic Dirt. Carpenter declares that Turner understood the measure of hi charges: "He said we're a rock'n'roll band, and so he was gonna produce us like a rock'n'roll band."

The results speak for themselves. This is a band so confident in its abilities that it can clear nearly 10,000 iTunes downloads of a single – last year's universally-acclaimed Yeahno – and not even find the room for it on their album. That's because DROWNING FOR DAYLIGHT is the work of a band at the height of its game, from the take-no-prisoners opener Headspace to the redemptive closer Warning Bell. Or listen to Tipping Point: re-recorded from its single incarnation, it pulses with a new, dark energy.

Don't bother pinning genres to Euphonic: they don't want to, and neither do you. What you want to know is this: if this is the future of Australian rock, we're in for a golden age.

ANDREW P STREET