For as long as I’ve been familiar with the Appleseed Cast, I’ve never done a deep dive into their discography. Ten years passed between hearing them on Deep Elm’s Emo Is Awesome/Emo Is Evil compilation and purchasing Low Level Owl. It’s taken me six years to buy anything else in their catalogue.

And when it comes down to it, I basically purchased Peregrine at random while looking at the severe lack of Appleseed Cast in my collection and deciding I needed to do something about it.

It wasn’t much of a gamble: in my dabbling with The Appleseed Cast’s discography, I’ve noted them to be incredibly consistent. Even their less celebrated records are innovative and rewarding, even if they lack the epic scope of their so-called Great Works.

Peregrine might lack the grand scope of Low Level Owl (honestly though, what doesn’t?), but it doesn’t feel like it knows that—especially with a run time of 55 minutes. The record features some of the group’s best combinations of emo, post rock, electronica, and punk, played like mad scientists pouring each genre out of a beaker to see what it creates. Tapes are chopped and warped in post-production, which only reinforces the laboratory vibe.

Instrumental opener “Ceremony” kicks off the record with a full-scale post rock explosion before fading into the ragged acoustic pop-punk of “Woodland Hunter (Part 1).” And at this point, it’s worth noting that “Woodland Hunter (Part 2)” puts the same video to a skittering drum beat and sparse guitar and keyboards. The keyboard-driven “Mountain Halo” could be a trip hop song if it weren’t for Nathan Richardson’s angular drum beat and Chris Crisci’s impassioned vocals.

This sort of genre-hopping isn’t anything new for the Appleseed Cast. After all, Low Level Owl almost plays like three different records. By the end of Vol. 2, the songs are hardly recognizable. Peregrine feels almost as diverse, but more unified. The genre-bending happens within the same track, not just across different songs on the playlist.

With that in mind, this is not a record that can be understood within a few listens. And given that my first spin upon receiving it yesterday was probably the first time I listened to it in one sitting, there’s still a lot of unfolding yet to come with this album. But even scratching the surface, I can tell that this is a masterpiece. And this tenth-anniversary reissue on marbled vinyl is a press worthy of such a magnificent album.