What strikes first is restraint. Too many bands chasing this kind of atmosphere mistake volume for weight, piling on reverb until the song collapses under its own mood. Kollins and Dury understand something subtler: tension lives in the spaces you don't fill. The vocal carries real ache without straining for sympathy — a difficult trick, and one most singers working this territory never quite land. The synth work doesn't decorate the song so much as breathe underneath it.

Dury's guitar is the track's secret engine. It doesn't crowd the vocal so much as shadow it — a riff here, a melodic line there, never demanding more space than the song needs to give it. It's the sound of a guitarist who has learned that one well-placed phrase outguns a wall of noise.

Thematically, the band continues circling the same questions that have shadowed their catalogue: the search for an answer, the journey as a stand-in for change, the need to make sense of a life that won't always cooperate, grief for what's been lost, and a stubborn refusal to let incomprehensible suffering have the last word. "All in Vain" doesn't resolve any of that — it sits inside it, offering company rather than conclusions.

The lineage shows without becoming a costume. The track opens on a bluesy guitar lick before a sudden lurch into something almost operatic catches you off guard, vocal and band trading the spotlight like sparring partners. British New Wave and post-punk run clearly underneath, alongside progressive, gothic, and electronic touches, but none of it reads as homage for its own sake. The band seem less interested in nostalgia than in figuring out where that lineage still has something to say now, against a music landscape crowded with platforms competing for the same five minutes of attention.

"All in Vain" won't convert listeners who want their darkness delivered at full throttle. For everyone else — anyone who still believes melancholy can be elegant rather than merely loud — Despite the Wane have handed over four minutes worth keeping.