For all of its simplicity, there’s something about punk that’s just slightly inaccessible.

If it keeps too close to the formula, it’s derivative. If it strays too far, or even if it has the right sonics but the wrong attitude, it’s a sell out.

Even if a band captures all of the fury and wrath of punk live, capturing that energy on record is as difficult capturing lightning in a jar.

But nobody must have told METZ.

The Ontario trio had already been playing for four years by the time they released their self-titled debut. But from the raw, fresh fury captured on tape, you would have thought they wrote the songs in a rabid writing session the week before. The band tears through a mix of hardcore punk and noise rock that lands somewhere between Fugazi, Black Flag, and Nirvana.

Alex Edkins delivers his nihilist lyrics in an atonal, half-shouted bark over his rapidfire guitar. Chris Slorach’s overdriven bass carries much of the chord structure, as Edkins’ guitar alternates between single-chord strums and squealing feedback. Hayden Menzies plays his drum set like he’s trying to destroy it. Punk anthems are punctuated with noise interludes not unlike those on Red Medicine by Fugazi. “Headache” and “Rats” are both pinnacles of the genre, and the rest of the album is just as strong.

They play furiously, but it would be almost completely lost with a producer that didn’t know where they were coming from. Luckily, METZ produced it themselves, covering the aural soundscape with a layer of speaker-blowing distortion that captures all of the fire of the music itself. In fact, the record ends with a thirty-second feedback loop that had me run to the stereo to make sure my turntable wasn’t feeding back (that’s a thing).

METZ doesn’t even break the thirty-minute mark, but it doesn’t have to. This is as strong a statement as any band could hope to make. And the fact that this was their debut record only makes it more impressive.