Pixies, “The Night The Zombies Came.”

Zombies, in popular culture, are commonly understood to be creatures whose natural lifetimes have ended, but who continue on in a kind of walking coma, devoid of a soul and all but the most basic of motor functions. With The Night the Zombies Came, Pixies, a band that’s been around since the mid-’80s and who 31 years ago lead singer Frank Black called “finished,” seem to be posing the question of their own relevance.

Pixies’ latest represents a progression of the band’s form, produced by Tom Dalgety, who worked on the band’s previous albums. Black uses elevated language, dark imagery and jarring rhyme to create a more sophisticated sound and feel than their early work.

Take the album’s second track, “You’re So Impatient.” Over familiar chunky guitar lines, the singer narrates a story that’s part renaissance faire, part rock and roll hyperbole: “We sat down at medieval town/ And I ordered a box of wine/ You said thanks but I do not dranks/ And I think that it’s dungeon time/ I don’t want mutton, I don’t want mead/ And you ain’t nothing with your need.”

Elsewhere, the music is more minimal, reminiscent of early Pixies as well as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. “Ernest Evans” is heavy and overdriven, fitting for a song paying tribute to rock and roll pioneer Chubby Checker.  “Oyster Beds” gallops with punk energy.

“Johnny Good Man” evokes similar Heartbreaker comparisons but the music is more ornate. “Hypnotized” offers up a richer soundscape with wah-wah guitar and synth complementing the fairly minimal guitar work. Both of these songs heavily feature throbbing bass lines provided by the band’s new bassist, Emma Richardson, formerly of Band of Skulls. She replaced Paz Lenchantin earlier this year. Richardson’s playing is most prominent on single “Motoroller,” where it anchors the song’s “Man Who Sold the World” vibe.

Lyrically, Black offers up a thematic cluster of empty roads, dark nights and unseen monsters. “Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)” posits an unlikely killer. “He went on a walk with Jane/ Never was he seen again/ European neighborhoods/ Hooked on drugs, lost in the woods/ But now I think I got, I got the goods on Jane,” Black sings.

Black revisits similar themes on “Chicken,” singing, “Other times I feel as I’m/ An actor of zombie movies/ Searching for you/ In town after town/ A lover who ain’t going to kill me/ I’m begging you, please.”

Reverb-drenched guitar adds to the haunted feeling on “I Hear You Mary.” “How long has it been since I trod this ruddy soil/ Since I flew above the fields of rapeseed oil/ A runaway gargoyle?,” Black sings, deliciously torturing the rhyme.

The Night the Zombies Came is very much alive as albums go. Black and company still know how to make compelling rock and roll, even if the band’s storytelling has grown a little more elaborate. As with Pixies alum Kim Deal releasing her first solo album in November, it’s obvious that for Pixies, there is life after death.