Does the future of music lie in the past? What’s the line between inspiration and imitation? Can you be simultaneously impressed and unimpressed? Get Pure (Alive Naturalsound Records), the third release by Mount Carmel, who hail from The Agit Reader’s Midwest home of Columbus, Ohio, raises a lot of questions. It’s ironic because in concept and practice the power trio comprised of brothers Pat (bass) and Matt (guitar) Reed, with James Mccain (drums) couldn’t be more straightforward. The band lives for big riffs, big drums, and dirty bass.

Get Pure exists in a land where the past 35 years just didn’t happen. It’s a place where James Gang records are traded back and forth like sacred totems; Cream trivia is shared like celebrity gossip; the Allman Brothers’ Live at Fillmore East is the biggest selling album of all time; and no one yells, “Play ‘Freebird!’” ironically. It’s the type of record where if you said it was a lost reissue from the ‘70s, no one would bat an eye. It’s not as jammy as some of the band’s presumed influences—most songs barely break the three-minute mark, and the longest song is a hair under five—but there is maximum riffage. It’s not overdone or oppressive, but the guitars are front and center. And like the great power trios of the past, the band put the power as the foundation. With Matt as the iron-lunged center of the storm, it’s a no frills record without being sparse.

But the question is raised, while performed and recorded well, does Get Pure get over because it neatly ticks so many boxes on the nostalgia chart? Is part of the thrill that it’s such a sonic archetype or does it succeed purely on its own merits? It would be one thing if the songs were simply virtual remakes, but they’re not. The songs work within the vocabulary of their influences, but aren’t simply loosely recast. That’s kind of the problem and kind of not: there’s no twist or one thing that makes this record uniquely Mount Carmel’s or drags it into the 21st century.

Such hair-splitting is because Get Pure is full of moments that clearly will slay live, even in they don’t hang together nicely on the record. And again, this is nothing that you haven’t heard something like before if you’re a classic rock fan. Still, no one slags AC/DC for essentially making the same record since forever, so it would seem odd to ding Mount Carmel for accomplishing what they wanted to do at a fairly impressive level. So what’s the verdict? Get Pure is a solid record if you don’t think about it too much, but even then there’s plenty to enjoy.