It’s hard not to have expectations around the first full release (following a limited EP) from Star & Dagger—the new band featuring a pair of lady-rock heavyweights, White Zombie powerhouse bassist Sean Yseult, and Cycle Sluts from Hell guitarist Dava She Wolf. On Tomorrowland Blues, those expectations go both met and unmet.

At their best, crunching and grinding on bluesy, chicken-fried metal tracks like “Freaktrain,” “Sidewinding,” and “Your Momma Was a Grifter,” the production skills of Gram Rabbit’s Ethan Allen and Queens Of The Stone Age/Eagles of Death Metal’s Dave Catching do an inspired job of showing off the throaty, Cherie Currie-ish snarl of singer Von Heissling, while giving us a deliciously tactile, fingerboard clattering take on Yseult’s bouncing bass lines. But with the beat keeping of Jesus Christ Superfly’s Dustin Crops often shoved to the back of the mix, some tracks lose their intended punch under a wall of fuzz that’s formidable but foggy, and just not fearsome enough.

All in all, Tomorrowland Blues sounds like the kind of debut that would do better to prove its muster live. Thankfully, with tour dates on the horizon, the band seems ready to do just that.