Let’s go ahead and call it a comeback. Interpol never actually broke up, but the New York–based band did take a hiatus after the tour in support of its self-titled fourth album.

That arguably underrated 2010 release was the group’s least successful, but “success” is relative: despite suffering in comparison to what had come before it, Interpol still landed in the Billboard Top 10 and garnered some positive reviews.

Nonetheless, the band had a good reason for taking some time off: after completing work on Interpol, founding member Carlos Dengler packed up his black Fender Jazz Bass and his empty shoulder holster and took his leave. His erstwhile bandmates hit the road without him, and then went their separate ways. Singer-guitarist Paul Banks focused on his already-extant solo career; drummer Sam Fogarino picked up a six-string to front a new project called EmptyMansions, which also featured Interpol’s long-time touring keyboardist, Brandon Curtis. And guitarist Daniel Kessler? Well, it turns out he was working on new Interpol songs.

Speaking to the Straight from Athens, Georgia, which he has called home since 2008, Fogarino recalls that the three remaining members reconvened at the behest of Kessler, who, true to his nature, stopped short of explicitly suggesting the band make a new record.

“He’s always been the instigator of all things Interpol, in terms of the songs,” Fogarino says. “He’s so noncommittal, and keeps his cards close: ‘Maybe we should get together.’ There was a break. It was 2012, and Paul was doing his solo record [Banks]. I think it was just before it was going to be released. He had finished recording it, and there was a window of time just to play around with some ideas. It was totally Daniel just seeing what Paul was up to, and then he gave me a call and said, ‘You want to come up to New York for a week?’ ”

The three men tossed some ideas around, reignited their creative spark, and then started writing a new album in earnest at the start of 2013. As to the question of who would step into Dengler’s combat boots, well, it practically answered itself.

“Paul realized that, the way the band had worked, it was always with bass lines already written when he would approach the songs guitarwise or from a vocal standpoint,” Fogarino notes. “And he realized that he had to kind of take it upon himself.”

Banks ended up writing and playing all the bass parts for the just-released El Pintor. (The title is Spanish for “the painter”, but it’s also an anagram of the group’s name.) Fogarino says Banks turned out to be “a natural”, noting that the frontman lived up to the seemingly impossibly high standard set by Dengler, whose distinctive playing had been one of Interpol’s defining characteristics.

“You’ve got to face up to it: Carlos was an excellent bass player, and we can’t all of a sudden start playing root notes now because he’s gone,” the drummer says. “But Paul’s a very well-rounded musician and a really good songwriter, and I think that’s what we all relied on when it was the three of us, that we all kind of pull from our ability—or at least our passion for songwriting, and for songs.”

Banks proves his mettle early on El Pintor. After a few deceptively serene bars, the opening track, “All the Rage Back Home”, explodes into a pulse-quickening groove built around a gritty four-string line and one of Fogarino’s most propulsively demolishing beats. The song’s immediacy and its instant-earworm chorus stand in marked contrast to much of the material found on Interpol, which was emotionally stark and relied more on brooding, 2-in-the-morning ambiance than on hooks.

El Pintor is hardly devoid of such atmosphere; “Tidal Wave”, for example, has enough melodic melodrama to please the most discerning postpunk punters, especially when Banks intones the portentous lyric “There’s a flood coming soon.” The song is enlivened and carried along by Fogarino’s rolling-thunder beat, however, and that’s one of the keys to the success of the record, which has been hailed as a return to the form Interpol showed on its first two long-players, 2002’s Turn on the Bright Lights and 2004’s Antics. The songs might explore cold, dark corners, but the band itself is clearly on fire.

“It seems like we were able to keep the tempo more upbeat while still being a little introspective—or moody, for lack of a better term—on this record,” Fogarino concurs, although he notes that he might have taken things into a wholly different realm, rhythmically speaking, had it not been for the encouragement of his bandmates. “There were a couple of points with some of the songs—‘Same Town, New Story’ and ‘Twice as Hard’—where I didn’t even want to put drums down. These melodies were just so rich and beautiful and cinematic, and it took me a minute to kind of feel that I was safe, that I wasn’t going to taint them with, like, a rock beat, you know? But as soon as you catch Daniel and/or Paul’s attention with something, they’re not gonna let it go. So as soon as I played something, it kind of took the song in a different direction. And I was still kind of like, ‘Oh, am I pissing on this?’ You know, ‘Does it need to do this?’ And they were like, ‘Yes.’ There was this underlying excitement to what was going on. I think sometimes you strike a balance, where you can have something a little more mature, but still kind of driving at the same time.”

Mind you, there was never any real danger that the endlessly inventive drummer would simply tap out a standard four-on-the-floor rock beat.

“I couldn’t if I tried,” he admits. “I just have this weird self-taught angle that I come from. Sometimes when I think I’m being really straight and to-the-point, people tell me otherwise. It can be frustrating sometimes—then again, I’d probably be bored just laying down a template.”

Interpol plays the Commodore Ballroom on Monday (September 15).