Island Records then brought in Lenny Kaye, "who made a few suggestions... 'Some of them were a bit odd' David recalls, 'like his calypso/reggae version of "Trick of the Light"' Rob: 'A bit odd! Basically we just shot them down in flames'". Nevertheless Kaye felt that the Triffids and their material were impressive enough and that they did not need his help. Eventually Gil Norton who had worked on their 1986 album, "Born Sandy Devotional", was brought back to re-record "Calenture". The album was released in November 1987 by White/Hot Records for the Australian market and by Island Records for Europe, United Kingdom, and United States. In 2007 Domino Records released a remastered edition as a 2× CD with five bonus tracks on the first disc and a second disc including 12 bonus tracks, mostly rehearsal demos of the original album's tracks. The term "calenture" is described in the sleeve notes as: "Tropical fever or delirium suffered by sailors after long periods away from land, who imagine the seas to be green fields and desire to leap into them". In February 1988 David McComb, in an interview with Paul Mathur and Stephen Phillips for "Rock Australia Magazine" ("RAM"), described "Calenture" as an "over-the-top record" and even called it the Triffids' "Heaven's Gate". The Triffids were nomadic, travelling back and forth from Australia to England to record the 'difficult' album and related to the disoriented sailors. David McComb is the principal songwriter, "it's upon [his] shoulders that most of the weight has been borne. It's the weight of lyrics which have been far more personal now... so intensely personal you can almost feel the pain". Wilson Neate of Perfect Sound Forever found that a "sense of alienation, betrayal, insanity and solitude still permeates his writing, although "Calenture" seems less explicitly imbued with Western Australian imagery than the previous records". Mathur and Phillips describe the album as "far and away the most 'produced' record The Triffids have ever done... packed full of little electronic surprises: drum computers, synthesisers, samplers, even a gadget that goes 'woop'". "Calenture", saw The Triffids explore themes of insanity, deception and rootlessness. AllMusic's Michael Sutton found "there's an undeniably spiritual feel to several of the songs" where "David McComb spews his words with the fiery passion of a backwoods preacher".