Native Sun - Songs Born From Love and Hate

Blend chunky, Stones' chord riffs, acidic Alice Cooper-esque vocals, and heaping spoonfuls of mid-70s raunch and roll and you get Brooklyn’s quartet Native Sun, a swaggering group that wears its influences proudly on its sleeve. Their five-song EP debut Songs Born From Love and Hate is a promising offering.

A band could do so much worse than modeling their sound on an epic era in rock music, wherein blues added some heft and glam, then gave birth to punk. All of that is spread generously across this energetic set. Crunching guitars, layered one upon another, whine and shred while choruses shout out anthemic slogans like “I really want it again,” “I don’t mind,” and “I get what I want right now!”

However, it’s on the final two “Blow” and “Pink Sky” that the band seems to take steps toward uniqueness, with the addition of the alchemy ingredient: a gram or two of psychedelia. These are also the longest tracks on the EP, perhaps representing the results of all of that fermentation, the distilled version of Native Sun. Not for sipping.