To be honest, the "virtual" supergroup of the Gorillaz really didn’t seem much more than a momentary confluence of talent when they released their self-titled debut album. The hit status of "Clint Eastwood" notwithstanding, that album was a moody, percolating riff on horror films and electronic bleep-filled nightmares; not exactly mainstream material, and not exactly an easy hint as to the group’s ultimate future efforts.

With the release of their second album, Demon Days, one's expectations were not very high. Gone were some of the most notable elements of the first collaborative team (Deltron 3000 and Kid Koala most substantially), the helm now firmly controlled by Blur’s Damon Albarn, himself recently finished with 2003's gloomy Think Tank. Indeed, at first listen, Demon Days actually comes off as completely unremarkable: some traditionally muffled Albarn vocals, heavy beats interspersed with strings and choirs, oblique Stipe-like mantras which resume the selfsame themes of paranoia and horror of the first album.

On repeated listens, however, something else unfolds. For one, Demon Days is much more structured and cohesive than the Gorillaz' first album. Songs bleed into one another, giving a hazy feel to the music, but tying the strands of a thick narrative together in return. Closer listens reveal the kernel underneath the surface of the music: a tightly-wound tale of excess, over-consumption, post-9/11 warfare, and decay masked cleverly by the group’s trademark horror motifs.

"Last Living Souls" begins the tale in earnest, portraying a hellish landscape that’s populated, but not truly alive. The next track, "Kids With Guns", shimmers with more energy and a foreboding chorus: 'Cause they're turning us into monsters / Turning us into fire / Turning us into monsters / It's all desire.' Two tracks later in "Dirty Harry", a literal children’s choir intones over a retro-beat of the need for guns to keep themselves from harm, countering the earlier track and adding to the menace all the more. Substantially, the album repeatedly mutates into a call and response within itself, answering questions about its own landscape with rejoinders in subsequent songs; other groups would market this as a concept album, but it’s apparent par for the course for the Gorillaz.

The lead single, "Feel Good Inc.", quickly lurches the middle of the album into a darker funk. What at first appears to be the lone playful song on the disc bleeds slowly into a descent into more anxiety and horror, courtesy a guest appearance by De La Soul. This downfall continues through "El Mañana", "Every Planet We Reach Is Dead", and "White Light", finally culminating in the second single, "DARE." Whereas previous tracks constituted the journey downward, "DARE" represents the climax of the trip: the final coked-up, party track before the end. Throbbing dancebeats and ghostly guest vocals ratchet from decadent excess and sexual energy into a riot. "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head" – a tale of militarism and apocalyptic revenge by Mother Nature as narrated by Dennis Hopper(!?!) – serves as a wrap-up of events, condensing all prior material into a disjointed tragedy.

All of this alone would be substantial enough material for an album, if a bit of a retread; however, Albarn, taking cues perhaps from his work on 13’s "Tender", adroitly completes the story with his linked final tracks "Don’t Get Lost in Heaven" and "Demon Days". The aural landscape of these tracks differ substantially from the rest, as if portraying the morning after: the sun creeping across to reveal the wreckage and debris left at the end of the album, Albarn adding commentary thereon. But rather than dwell only on the decayed and post-apocalyptic, Gorillaz pull out amazing hope for redemption and repair. Over fuzzy strings and worldbeat-esque drums, the London Community Gospel Choir finishes the album with a repeated call to pick up the pieces and "Turn to the sun". All may certainly not be well in the Gorillaz landscape, but the future within it looks better than anything before.