Our relationship with music is often discussed in quite shallow terms. Words like “enjoy” or “like” do little to express the full nuance of how music can make us feel. In fact, the assumption that music is meant to simply be enjoyed or liked is an inadequate lens that can impede how the artists intended us to interact with it.

For example, I’m not sure I enjoy this record. The first time I heard it, there was very little about it that I liked at all. In fact, after scanning through it the first time, the most accurate word for my reaction was probably disgust. But over the next week or so, I found myself returning to it several times, swirling it in my ears like wine in a glass trying to discern the exact reaction I was having.

And I couldn’t stop. Whether I liked the record or not, it got its barbed claws under my flesh and embedded itself there. I’m still not sure I’d say I enjoy this record—but I’m a little more sure that it doesn’t mean for me to.

I’ll also admit that I probably wouldn’t have purchased it had a glitch on Amazon not set it at $4. And I’ll also admit that much of my initial reaction was largely due to finding the band in the “Fans Also Like” section of Holy Fawn’s Spotify page. Objectively speaking, there’s not much sonic similarity between the two, which I was (foolishly) looking for. Instead, the French trio attacked me with a barrage of old-school screamo with Daughters-style loops and samples. “Water Wings” and “Rodin” in particular use chopped guitars to build rhythmic beats, not unlike David Knudson of Minus the Bear while the instruments burst in fiery blitzes of catharsis not unlike City of Caterpillar or Orchid.

Over all this, frontman Bart Hirigoyen screams full-throated treatises on disillusionment, whether relational or economic. There are a few moments, like in “Noah,” where he restrains his voice to an almost La Dispute-y spoken word. On “Tromp L’oeil” he even sings for a while. But these moments of calm are shortlived, brief clearings where the eye of the storm passes over you before the violent winds tear at the earth again.

And let’s get one thing straight: this record is violent, and powerfully so. But for all its fury, it isn’t chaotic. It is carefully, menacingly ordered, like an elaborately strategized military ambush. Throughout the attack, you are left to despair, helpless to defend against it. Since spending more time with it, I’m still not sure “enjoy” is the right word, but I’ve come to admire the might and precision that this record brings, and I keep coming back to it.