If the best thing Goth-rock can give us these days is a crowd of bands with a mascara fetish and a knack for somnambulant arrangements and the Goth-lite meets punk of A.F.I., it’s in need of a serious motivational talk.

Radio Berlin has just the speech prepared with Glass. The band’s modern Goth sounds neither soppy nor cliché – a remarkable feat in and of itself – the band’s gloomy fare draws heavily on post-punk-era dark rock, with the token Joy Division and Pornography-era Cure allusions provided with sharp, deliberate beats and stark atmospheric background sounds. Glass isn’t just a romp through super-cool record collections, however – Radio Berlin attacks its music with an intensity that’s forgotten in post-millennial Goth rock. Singer/guitarist Jack Duckworth rambles through each song with that barely-contained delivery reminiscent of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis and The Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler, while his band’s minimalist arrangements speak volumes for the powers of understated minimalism.

Any band can trot out a clone of Joy Division and Psychedelic Furs tunes, but Radio Berlin’s backbone sets Glass apart. Unwilling to lie down and choke in its own tears, Glass opts for gloom rather than mope. It’s a subtle, but important distinction. Radio Berlin isn’t heartbroken or depressed as much as just plain creepy and out of place during daylight hours. Imposing drums – think of The Cure’s darkest moments – don’t just provide a beat for keyboards that could be played at a really, really cool wake and Duckworth’s dying-man delivery, but give “D.E.S.” structure and an ominous tone. “Knives” takes distorted but faraway guitar sounds that crash against Lyndsay Sung’s desensitized, detached keyboards with a primal urgency. Even the album’s most conventional track, “Gauze,” mixes a funk-groove bass line with a guitar that gloriously sounds like a dying industrial buzz saw, to inject a bit of menace into the dance floor.

Throw away the plastic nightclub fangs, dead-rockers: Radio Berlin gives the genre the fangs it’s missed since the demise of greats like Bauhaus and Joy Division. Glass is everything the genre was supposed to be: dark, moody and, most of all, sinister and vaguely threatening.