From the beginning seconds of M(US)IC, the debut album from Buffalo’s Damiera, it’s clear that this is a band who likes playing at full throttle. Dual guitars ceaselessly interweave meandering angular melodies and beautifully discordant chord stabs, while a distorted bass throbs and crawls between sporadic drum hits, everything somehow melding together into this math-y marriage of noise. It’s a fusion of four integral parts, interlocking so precisely that they’re almost indistinguishable from each other, each contributing equally to the final result. The band careens along at a breakneck pace throughout this collection of ten songs, each track ending as abruptly as it starts, until the album is over and you realize you haven‘t exhaled in 31 minutes.

For someone like me, Damiera embodies a perfect balance of all my many musical tastes. The kid who listened to all that punk in high school revels in their constant energy, relentlessly pushing each song to the finish with the requisite number of shout-along choruses and bouncy yelps. The college prog nerd giddily closes his eyes while he tries to count along with the aid of a calculator as time signatures seamlessly shift and melt in and out of each other. And the self-assured certified music snob, so confident in the infallibility of his own preferences, charts out the whole thing to make sure all the right compositional elements are there. This is music with an immediate vitality, achieving a huge impact on first listen, but still rewarding repeat listens with a generous amount of hidden subtleties.

The band’s sound is like theoretical better versions of all the bands you might cite as influences. If Fall Of Troy learned to play to a metronome, or if Minus The Bear practiced their instruments for six hours a day, or if Further Seems Forever ditched emo and surrendered to their prog tendencies, it might come close to what Damiera are about. Undeniably confident, M(US)IC is a remarkably mature debut album, sounding more like the product of decades of careful perfection than a rookie band finding its sea legs on a rickety raft. While it’s true that the band cranks it to 11 for the vast majority of the album, they’re also clever enough to make the rare tranquil interludes really count, not to mention wise enough to cut the last song off before you have time to feel like you’ve been bombarded by such an onslaught.

If there is a weak element on this album, it’s definitely the vocals, which can’t help but be overshadowed by the robotic precision of the rest of the instruments. Dave Raymond sounds great when he’s half-singing, half-shouting at the top of his range, but as soon as he pulls back, the conviction leaves and he sounds vulnerable and limp against such flawlessly performed music. Luckily these instances are rare and they’re more than made up for by the transcendent moments like the chorus of “Immure,” in which Raymond perfectly belts out every single word over a jerky fist-pumping 5/4 groove.

Assuming the world is ready for Damiera, there should be no limit to what they can accomplish with this album. Though their dynamic range is perhaps a little limited, the diverse elements that make up their trademark sound should appeal to fans of indie, punk, prog, math rock, and everywhere in between. When the chunky “Obsessions” eventually stutters to its final cadence, you’ll probably want to either take the time to reflect on the experience, or you’ll start it over from the beginning. I usually find myself among the latter. I’ve been waiting for a band with this level of technical proficiency to manage a sound that is actually accessible from start to finish, and having finally found them, M(US)IC won’t be leaving my CD player for awhile.