3 out of 5

Label: Expert Works

Produced by: Shane Hochstetler

So much fun, but a little all over the place.

The dual guitared quartet of Bald Eagle hit the Midwest hard with their debut album, gathering a nice gaggle of nearby talent to spread their punk-centric sound out pretty wide – going ska, going hardcore, going post-rock… The energy in executing these styles – and the way the group manages to combine them effectively, jumping from something you’re rocking out to and then suddenly you’re skanking – is never not impressive, but its unpredictability ultimately undermines some of the album’s identity.

This experience is pretty well summarized in an opening trio of tracks: a punked-out, technical-wizardry opener, a swaggery, rocking followup; and then a kind of standard rock song. Track two may not be as full-steam-ahead as one but it builds back up to that, but while track three rocks, it doesn’t rock in a way that wasn’t already covered between those preceding songs; it’s kind of set up to disappoint. Because the group plays with gusto, you don’t really notice in the moment, but the effect of this cycle – which is capped off with some instrumentals that, again, while enjoyable either feel out of place (e.g. emotive closer Sniffing Glue And Casual Sex; and maybe the funny-naming shtick doesn’t always help) or kind of weightless in comparison to the material around them (e.g. Turbo Sex-O-Phonic Delight, which is damned behind the stunning stylistically twisty bravado of Salute The Damned).

Shane Hochstetler’s production guarantees we get volume without overload, and he tends to guide the bands he works with to a good balance of that volume – building in breathing room – but the balance here is tougher when BE wants to use it to try on different genres. Carl Saff’s remaster, as per his m.o., way punches up the drums and treble-y guitar layer, then also pushes the vocals slightly deeper into the background. I think this leans into Hochstetler’s style well, kind of aligning all the album’s riffs to be at a similar level of intensity, buuut… the original has a kind of clumsy rawness to it that makes the style mish-mash feel more organic. That said, Saff’s take sounds pretty grand on vinyl, less so – a lot “sharper,” sometimes to the album’s detriment – on bandcamp, so it might’ve been mastered with the former in mind. Pluses and minuses.