"Rich Part of Town" is gloriously rude. The riff arrives like a bailiff at the door: aggressive, unembarrassed, and entirely uninterested in your small talk. It sets the terms within seconds. This is not a song that wants to be liked at dinner parties, least of all the sort held behind those hedges. Rock music has spent decades being politely concerned about inequality, and here at last is a record that gets properly cross.

Credit is due to the engine room. Kevin D'Angelo, of progressive rock outfit Squeaky Feet, plays drums with the kind of dynamic intelligence that prog players carry in their wrists and rarely get to spend on three minutes of fury. He drives the song forward without ever flattening it, leaving Todd room to snarl and swing. The result is that rarest of things, a rhythm section that sounds angry and educated at once, like a philosophy seminar that has just been told the funding is being cut.

Then comes the solo, and it earns the word "explosive" the press release hangs on it. It does not noodle or show off. It erupts, a flare fired over the mansion rooftops, and you can almost hear the neighbourhood watch reaching for the telephone. The best guitar breaks are arguments conducted without words, and this one makes its case with ruthless economy.

Todd's lyrical target is wide. Greed is the obvious villain, but he reserves a particular contempt for the weaponisation of religion, the habit of turning faith into a lever and the sacred into a sales pitch. That could easily have become a sermon. Instead it plays as a wake-up call, an invitation to walk away from ideas that have long outlived their usefulness. His own verdict on those who hoard fortunes beyond any possible spending while the suffering goes on is "sociopathic", and he delivers it with the weary clarity of a man who has done the sums. Anger this well aimed is a pleasure to hear.

It helps that Todd refuses to play the monk. Nice things, he allows, are perfectly fine. His quarrel is with indifference, the sort that can step over a sleeping stranger on the way to a second holiday home. That distinction keeps the song humane, and it gives the fury somewhere to land. Hatred is cheap, and Todd offers something harder to come by: moral arithmetic set to a riff you could crack walnuts with.

Naturally, a Denver musician who blends rock with electronic experimentation could have wandered off into the fog. He keeps the song lean, hungry and pointed straight ahead. The ambition is cosmic, concerning humanity, its planet and its future, but the execution is gloriously local: one man, one jog, one injustice, one amplifier turned up past the point of good manners.

The tour dates, running from Denver through New York, New Orleans, Austin and Kansas City, suggest the song is destined for sweaty rooms where it will sound even better. Seek it out there, and take someone who needs shaking by the collar.

"Rich Part of Town" does not offer solutions, and it does not pretend to. What it delivers is a righteous, riff-driven kick up the conscience, and at the moment that is worth rather more than another polite tweet. Todd has made a record that wants the powerful to squirm. Judging by the volume, it should.