Whoa! Better check the label on this one. Is this really a new album from an indie band, or some long-lost hard rock gem that I misplaced? Maybe it’s the Aerosmith comeback album that nobody dared hope for, or the new classic the Black Crowes keep promising. Or maybe my player fell into a time warp, but it’s welcome to stay there for the 40-minute playtime.

You get the picture, but Zita is really only retro in the sense that hardly anybody is making full-throttle rock ’n’ roll albums anymore. It doesn’t sound like nostalgia is much on their minds, but a roaring good time definitely is. The opening, “High Rise,” thunders out with some heavy guitar riffage and a lot of lusty shouting (Michael Mullins and guitarist Brad Keller split lead vocals) and the energy barely lets up from there. Sure, there are plenty of echoes from vintage bands—“The Picture” has some call-and-response vocals in Van Halen style, and the bass intro of “Sweet Desire” recalls Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion”—but those are just nods and never the whole point of a song.

The Louisiana feel is between the lines, but it’s there—especially when they get into slightly darker numbers like the title track and the sole acoustic number, “Smoke” (which has a surprising J.J. Cale-type sound). Mullins is also a trombone player (and the son of Bonerama’s Mark Mullins), but when trombone appears here at all, it’s fuzzed and wah-wah’ed to the point where it becomes another lead guitar. Mullins senior gets into the swing on “Magnolia Soul,” which also has some tasty B-3 from John Gros. It’s partly a nod to local roots, and mostly it’s another big ol’ heavy riff-rocker.

Those of us who review albums are used to getting “guitar rock is back” hype every few years—but here’s a homegrown band doing it for real, and apparently doing it for the sheer kick of it. It’s a damn sight better than Greta Van Fleet’s platinum debut and way less self-conscious as well.