When Klaxons appeared in 2007, they were a splash of colour in a music scene that looked decidedly grey.

Successful indie bands were singing about the dullness of life over a nicked Kinks riff, but Klaxons offered something different. They took the bleeps and sirens of early rave music and beefed them up into rock songs with lyrics drawn from the stories of Thomas Pynchon and J.G Ballard. Their debut album, Myths of the Near Future, was a huge success, winning the Mercury Prize and selling over a quarter of a million copies.

Klaxons rounded off that year as one of the biggest bands in Britain and went away to write their second album. But then nothing happened for three whole years. Conjecture is widespread about what the band actually did, but what is known is that their first attempt at a second album was rejected by their record label and what eventually became new release, Surfing the Void, went through three producers before dribbling out this year with no publicity, as if their label had already written it off.

During their gig at the O2 it quickly becomes apparent that Klaxons’ new songs are nothing to be ashamed of. A collection of good, solid rock songs with opener Flashover and new single Echoes both especially good. The new material is much more refined than their debut, which sounded like a band trying to cram in as many ideas as they could into an album. It’s only this which makes the new material seem lightweight, and more like a slimmed down Muse than anything else. The frenzy that used to accompany Klaxons’ live shows has drained away, only really returning when they bring out Magick and debut single Atlantis to Interzone, which have the whole room swirling. If they hadn’t seemed so different in the first place, then this would be viewed as a perfectably respectable follow-up tour, but after the impact Klaxons made when they first arrived, it feels a bit flat.