“It’s not as poppy as the last album,” says Gabe Shapiro. The rest of Volante nods in assent. “I think this is a darker toned album.” Understatement is characteristic of this bunch: Static Until Sunrise, their first record in three years, tends to invite descriptions like “seething” and “relentless.” The riffs are short and fast, following upon one another breathlessly. You could measure the “pop” in this album with an eyedropper. Yet for all their soaring intensity—Volante is surely the most aptly named band in the Twin Cities—the songs have a melodic flair that keeps them in your head. If “poppy” is altogether inappropriate, “catchy” certainly isn’t.

Formed in 1998, Volante has quietly become one of the best bands in town. What Shapiro describes as a trend towards a less “poppy” sound is also a move to a more specific one for the band: their previous effort, 45 Degrees North, experimented more with grooves and tempos. Though it had a number of excellent tracks, it was uneven overall. Static Until Sunrise, by contrast, is a highly focused and polished piece of work. It shows the band’s increasing confidence in its own musical sensibilities.

Volante’s sound is clearly descended from the post-hardcore family tree, favoring tough guitar and bass textures to anthemic punk riffing. The band modulates the intensity of their songs through the density of their musical interplay: a song like “Blood Let” will begin with spacious, chiming chords, then build its way towards swirling, counterpointed frenzy at the bridge. However, like ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (another aptly-named band to whom, truth be told, they bear little resemblance),Volante has managed to massage the anger and dissonance of their music into something a broad audience will find palatable.

The band is eager to share the credit for their ongoing success with a range of collaborators, who have been responsible for everything from packaging design to album remixes. “I don’t know if it’s out of laziness or love but this whole recent era for us has been about relinquishing control,” says Josh Madson, the band’s drummer. “But we’re always working with people we trust,” Jeff Mitchell is quick to qualify. He shares guitar duties with his brother Jon. “It’s sort of like adding members to the group.”

Aesthetic Apparatus, which has recently become the Cities’ hippest design firm, has had a particularly close relationship with the band: some of their best and earliest promotional work was for Volante. “I went to high school with Dan, half the team,” says Shapiro. “We were in our first band together. He and I have been really good friends for probably 15 years. That’s been really cool for us. It’s nice that we know them enough that we can just tell them ‘do whatever you want.’”

That laissez faire attitude complements the band’s internal structure, which is itself thoroughly collaborative. The band writes songs together by assembling riffs and beats into larger compositions, which are then frequently reworked, discarded or cannibalized for parts. “We store a memory of things we’ve done in the past few months,” says Jeff. “It tends to be a more organic experience than anything you would sit down and map out,” Shapiro explains. “To some degree we’ve gotten used to ... well, for lack of a better way of putting it, how we sound. And that’s sort of developed into these certain ways of doing things.”

The real accomplishment of Static Until Sunrise is the way it presents those complex, segmented compositions as an organic whole. By all accounts Brooce Templeton, the album’s producer, was instrumental in achieving that consistency. “He’s the kind of guy who will lose sleep over the fact that maybe the guitar tone isn’t sounding right on one little track,” says Madson. “We put a thank-you credit for his wife on our new record because she had to put up with so much. He has ProTools at home, so he did a lot of mixing there. I mean, he basically spent nine months mixing our record without stopping.”

The drawn-out production of Static Until Sunrise—nearly three years in the making—was due in part to difficult personal situations for the band members. “I’m sure we each have our own experiences of how making this record was. I think it was difficult for all of us, partly because it took so long. It’s just the way things worked out,” says Shapiro. “I think the overriding thing for me on this record is the fact that I was going through some of the worst shit, losing my dad. He and I were really close, and we hadn’t always been. So for him to get sick and deteriorate so fast, right when I’m writing the lyrics to most of the songs ...”

It was a lot to go through, but as a result the new tunes have a lyrical urgency that finally matches the band’s sound. The songs on 45 Degrees North were frequently characterized by what Shapiro calls a “naive political bent” that stood in the way of the emotional impact of the material. “I can’t be Ian McKaye,” he says resignedly. Fortunately he’s come into his own as a lyricist this time around.

“It was a very cathartic process to write [the lyrics on] this record, and I think it gave me the most constructive outlet,” he says, a bit too flatly. Considering how difficult the situation was, a bit of understatement shouldn’t be surprising. But Shapiro seems to catch himself this time. “We progressively get more and more dark from release to release,” he says. “So in about four more years we’re going to be ... The Sisters of Mercy.” Jeff laughs and shakes his head: “Oh God, I can’t wait!”

Volante plays the CD release show for Static Until Sunrise on Sat., Mar. 20, at the Triple Rock Social Club. With Superhopper, Malachi Constant and Staraoke throughout the evening. 10 p.m. $6. 21+. 629 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. 612-333-7399.

You can find out more about Volante on their official website.