In the run-up to LOTTO’s release, They Are Gutting a Body of Water’s mastermind, Doug Dulgarian, said he wanted to strip away all embellishments and pretense to make a “guitar record.” As becomes obvious very early in the album, he achieved that and then some. Pretty, melodic verses and bridges aside, the songs on LOTTO sound like they’re perpetually collapsing under the atavistic crunch of the guitars.

The album is a powder keg of angry laments and dizzying loudness. Aside from a few small missteps—like the mildly washed-out closer or the hack turntablist add-ons on “american food”—TAGABOW keep it steady and good.

For those looking for connective tissue, there’s the ear-splitting distorted romanticism of My Bloody Valentine and the yearning vocalizations of Smashing Pumpkins. But the closest pivot point TAGABOW mount here are fellow Philly indie punkers Blue Smiley, who started around the same time. Whether purposefully or incidentally, the two bands have long been swapping ideas and reverb units, and together have come to redefine American shoegaze.

Like all great college indie, what LOTTO does so well—and in such great style—is forge a strangely complete hyper-American dreamland: small suburban homes strung along pine-lined roads, emotionally sodden off-campus parties, dive bars with cheap beer specials, and abandoned warehouses filled with lost kids searching for meaning in a pair of headphones. Of course, in the case of Dulgarian and TAGABOW, that reverie-like state comes laced with all the tragic inevitabilities of artful middle age—squinting through crow’s feet at a tumbling world, dull new adult itches tugging at old addiction scratches, lower back pain, taxes, trains running late.

On LOTTO, They Are Gutting a Body of Water pen another fantastic plea for empathy in the face of rot—with shattering amps to match.