IT’S 13 years since Cardiff three-piece Feeder released debut album Polythene and with their seventh album, Renegades, they’ve gone back to those grungy roots.

Another drummer change – Karl Brazil is their third, after Jon Lee, who killed himself, and Mark Richardson, who’s returned to Skunk Anansie – has coincided with frontman Grant Nicholas and bassist Taka Hirose moving away from their hook-laden indie rock of the mid-Noughties.

And it’s probably for the best, albeit commercially risky. They’d begun to sound tired, but Renegades brings them back to life, especially with opener White Lines, the piledriving Call Out and the punky Left Foot Right.

It might feel one-dimensional once you get to the end of the 12-track, 38-minute album and it isn’t littered with killer moments, but it’s short, punchy and heavy.

Feeder peaked commercially around 2005, at about the time London boys the Mystery Jets began to catch the attention of the wider world.

They came from weird beginnings – singer Blaine Harrison and guitarist William Rees were only eight when Blaine’s dad, Henry, formed the band, and they proceeded to sing in Latin, play bells with feet and get all prog rock.

The sound emerging from fourth album, Serotonin, is less chaotic than all that, but for all its beautiful moments, not least Melt and Lorna Doone, it could probably do with some irrationality, or even some of Feeder’s oomph.

There are nice Byrds-esque melodies and Beach Boys harmonies throughout, and clever use of synthesisers, music’s current must-have accessory. But the lyrics are a bit schoolboy, and where the inventiveness wanes it all sounds a bit too, well, nice.

• Feeder play Leeds Metropolitan University on October 21.