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While Tesfaye's voice remains the star attration, Illangelo's production is at a high point on Echoes: From the decadent 'Hong Kong Garden' orientalisms on 'Outside' to the heart-rending vocal looping on 'The Host' to the sleepy-eyed, morning-after bluntness of 'Same Old Song', each lecherous tale is lifted by the attentive and elegant production. With drums that stutter and slice more like Trent Reznor than Tricky, 'Initiation' handily defines what separates the Weeknd from other R&B acts, folding in the post-punk influences, the industrial touches, and that oddly alluring menace into four minutes of captivating hell. 'cause all we ever do is love.' It's transparently deceptive, and it slips into 'Initiation', a cringe-inducingly detailed tale of drug-fueled kidnapping and gang-rape told through the part-grunted, part-rapped exhortations of an inhuman goblin.

Album centerpiece 'XO / The Host' is a stomach-turning tale of corruption and coercion, featuring one of the record's most uncomfortable moments: After Tesfaye sings of reducing some nameless girl to destitution, the beat goes quiet as he self-satisfyingly mocks, 'And if they won't let you in/ You know where to find me. With a clearer and less obtuse narrative arc than Thursday, the album finds his snaky, manipulative persona at its most blatantly corrosive.

In lyrical terms, Echoes of Silence is Tesfaye's strongest work.

And his conversational intonation emphasizes the lingering threat that underlies every lyric. The slinky, spectral 'Montreal' is the closest thing to a pure pop song Tesfaye has written since 'What You Need'. The songwriting is tighter and more streamlined. Where House of Balloons was a debut tour-de-force, and Thursday an arduous journey into the internal turmoil of a self-loathing narcissist, Echoes of Silence exudes a brazen, animalistic confidence: The production is impeccable but never showy. The ease with which Tesfaye can shock and awe listeners at this point feels like something of a victory lap. It's an audacious intro even for an artist whose output has already stretched lyrical and musical themes to depraved extremes. Well, it turns out Tesfaye isn't out of surprises: As his fans now know, opening track 'D.D.' stands for 'Dirty Diana', and Tesfaye channels the King of Pop with an eerily accurate vocal facsimile.

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