After a decade in the wilderness, mired in irrelevance, the Cure, at last? After misconceived covers of Bowie and the Doors, after multiple flits through a revolving door of band members, after so many questions from fans of whatever happened to them…where did it all drop so suddenly away?

Only bandleader Robert Smith could respond to that, and with the indelible power and magnificence his band’s new, self-titled album reaches, few would want to pose the questions that might again quell such a good thing.

As if anticipating the flak, the band is back with more ferocity than ever, and lays it all out bare in the album opener, “Lost,” a four-minute scorcher of musical honesty and lyrical pleas, the purity of which has not been heard since “Plainsong” off 1989’s Disintegration. The song meanders, out-of-tune, grinding away through torment and maturity, a far cry from the cute love-hopefulness and permanent teenhood that shadowed much of their popular catalog. This is hardly a commercial for digital photography: It’s pure epic, no questions asked, all answers received. Not a return to form, but a redefinition of it.

And it continues through song after song, wrenching unbelievable beauty out of every drumbeat, every note, every lyric.

After this year’s equally impressive showing from Morrissey, one must wonder what Depeche Mode may be up to…