There's an appealing argument that the best music is made in the bleakest times.

The late 1970s, for instance (nuclear paranoia, the dawn of Thatcherism, Austin Allegros everywhere) spawned Joy Division and post-punk. Of course, the argument has its flaws: Britain's biggest-selling record of 1978 was Boney M. Nevertheless, great bands fit their moment – and, with No One Can Ever Know, The Twilight Sad's time has come.

While the Kilsyth outfit's last album, Forget The Night Ahead, was a retreat into sound – a maelstrom of suffocating noise – No One Can Ever Know is a reshaping of their style. Fittingly for an album recorded in 2011, a year marked by riots and economic panic, their touchstone seems to be 1981 (and what a magnificent year for music that was): ice-cold synths, hissing percussion and shards of serrated guitar. Yet where Editors had a go at this sort of thing a couple of years ago and sounded like third-rate copyists, The Twilight Sad and their new aesthetic are a perfect fit. What they did with guitars and accordions on the first album, and guitars and more guitars on the second, they're now doing with machines: sculpting a sound that's ever more monumental.

They're also doing it with a pared-down line-up, following the departure of bassist Craig Orzel two years ago. That the remaining trio have chosen not to replace him is telling – would something be diluted or lost? – but it's equally notable that they co-opted studio godhead Andrew Weatherall in an "anti-production" role and opted for the all-out embracing of electronics.

The album begins with an ominous, distant electrical growl before jolting into the skeletal synths of Alphabet. Along with the singles Sick and Another Bed, it's one of the more immediately accessible tracks, motorik and melancholic, but James Graham's stentorian voice is richer and more resonant than ever, stamping this straight away as a work from the heart; from the heart of the Central Belt.

It's a Scottish album – unmistakably so with those vocals; arguably so with flickers of the folk inflections of old in the music – but its focus is personal, not political. Graham's lyrics have always pointed obliquely to everyday atrocity, and the breathtaking Nil – the centrepiece of the album and of The Twilight Sad's career so far – is the acme of this. Fragments of quotidian enormity meld into something towering and terrifying; "and we all know whose fault it was," Graham intones as the music explodes, its foundry beats hammering to a frenzy. One synth soars; another grinds; somewhere, miles beneath the metallic roar, a piano plays something that touches briefly on jazz. This is intense, immense, masterful w.

These nine tracks are perhaps more about texture and mood than melody, but that's not to say the tunes aren't there. The possible exception is Dead City, which is less a song than a monolith. There's a gloriously propulsive beat but the music is too dense to move: it's a black hole sucking in everything around it. That it's the second song on the album says a lot about how confident – rightfully – The Twilight Sad have become.

This is not an easy album to listen to. It's not necessarily a pleasant one either: rather, it is challenging, unsettling and even upsetting. But it is compelling and it is brilliant. It is perfectly of its time, and it will endure.