These days, I generally treat my record budget with a level of judiciousness. Every dollar is precious, so I typically don’t make any purchases without thoroughly vetting each album in my wantlist, listening and relistening until I feel confident enough to pull the trigger.

But every once in a great while, I’ll take a risk, such as the 5-for-$25 random bundle from Topshelf Records that landed me this record and Mock Orange (among others). But if this were the only worthwhile record in the bunch, it still might have been worth it.

Running through ten tracks in thirty-seven minutes, Hairball is a raucous run through the loud, raw, guitar-centric indie rock of the ’90s—a huge shock since the only thing I knew about them was that they were an label celebrated for its emo bands. The songs are fast and loud, trafficking in bright, distorted guitar chords, fill-happy drumming, and easy, singalong ready vocals.

There are shades of Green Day, Dinosaur Jr., Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Nirvana, Sonic Youth…all the usual suspects. And admittedly, writing send ups to these legends is nothing new in indie rock.

But Nai Harvest doesn’t sound like archivists copping riffs from legendary bands and rearranging them just enough to get past copyright laws. Instead, they’re closer to a blender—chopping the original ingredients into a puree so fine that they’re just barely recognizable.

“Spin” kicks things off with a bang, offering up an anthemic drum beat and one-chord progression that sounds deceptively familiar. I might have racked my brain trying to think of which scene in She’s All That it was in if I didn’t already know it was released in 2015. “Sick On My Heart” picks up the tempo and demands your moshing shoes.

For the most part, most of the tracks keep at this unrelenting, punky tempo, with great results. The A-side of Hairball is like a indie rock steamroller that crushes you under its youthful exuberance. The B-side track “Ocean of You” slows things down. It’s not quite a ballad, but it feels like it in the context with jangling, dreamy guitars breaking through the album’s usual wall of distortion. I haven’t decided if it’s the best track on the album or if the difference in mood is drastic enough to set it apart.

With bands like Japandroids, Cloud Nothings, and Yuck exploding with the same sort of ’90s worship, it seems a shame that Nai Harvest didn’t get more attention. Had this album been released twenty years earlier, those same bands would likely be lauding it alongside Pinkerton, Dookie, and Nevermind. Instead, they broke up a year later. So it goes.