Let’s skip the semantics of Mish Way on Deep Fantasy (Domino Recording Co.). This is White Lung’s breakthrough album, and just as much as the sonics are inflated and their hardcore roots are stretched into a panoramic vision, so are Way’s diatribes. With heavy words about addiction, relationships, and gender politics, I can’t begin to relate. The fact that I’m male voids my ability to interpret any of it. I can’t tell if it’s ambiguous, abstract, or wholly auto-biographical (I’d bet on the last), I just know it’s essential to the aesthetic of White Lung. Were Way screaming in Portuguese, it would have the same effect on the average listener. Even without decoding her perception of the world around her, you can glean rage, frustration, and pure visceral energy, and that is enough to warrant Deep Fantasy as an important record among 2014’s mostly vacuous musical landscape.

Deep Fantasy’s greatest asset is fury, but it’s not just any kind of fury that fuels “Drown With the Monster.” It’s accessible, radio-ready fury. White Lung strike a perfect balance between the extreme poles in which such intensity—call it “punk” if you wish—can be mitigated, positing them in a place that pulls from both spheres, be it the candied riffs of Paramore or the grotesque chaos of Perfect Pussy. The guitars are unrelenting throughout, but again call on everything from the underrated pop of My Chemical Romance to the mathematical nihilism of Dillinger Escape Plan. If anything, it’s amphetamine grunge, a style that appropriates Hot Topic sensibilities for a more plugged-in, but less disgruntled youth. Much of that has to do with Way’s unapologetic worship of Courtney Love. Every nuance in her voice—which is a kind of raspy, screeching rant and moan—is borrowed, so much so that both “Snake Jaw” and “Just for You,” could have been lifted directly from Live Through This and no one would blink an eye.

Ultimately, it’s that sameness that harms Deep Fantasy. One shouldn’t be surprised if Love herself releases an even more ferocious album later this year. For White Lung, though, it’s doubtful that the record should be anything else but unrelenting, big feminist conceits and all. When the band “slows” to a slightly less aggressive stomp on “Face Down,” it could be considered a ballad, or at least the most expansively contemplative moment of the record’s thrifty 33 minutes. Perhaps my age shows when I can’t truly classify what White Lung are doing as being all that new. Vital? Sure. But Deep Fantasy fails to break any ground except for the sidewalk that lies directly underneath the band’s feet. If you’re looking for a scorching set of songs to soundtrack a summer night’s drive into reckless abandon, you could find a few albums more worthy than Deep Fantasy, but it’s not necessary to dig much deeper than that.