“The Ocean and the Sun” is the title for The Sound of Animals Fighting’s new album, but it’s also the itinerary. The supergroup switches soundscapes like they’re in a rocket ship from Uzbekistan to the heavens. Any post-hardcore fan will enjoy this album, especially rockers with ADD.

The band members, revealing themselves only by their animal names—walrus, nightingale, lynx and skunk (“to help the listener focus on the experience of the music and its creation instead of the personalities behind it”)—achieved fame in the bands Rx Bandits and Circa Survive, but in TSAF they embrace a harder turn, transforming former Bandits trombonist Rich Balling into a Cedric Bixlar-Zavala (of The Mars Volta and At the Drive-in) soundalike at vocals. Meanwhile, co-vocalist Anthony Green (of Circa Survive) channels a more Craig Owens (of Chiodos, and known as the Ram during his brief stint with TSAF) timbre.

Though Owens is gone now, TSAF have retained a distinctive Chiodos sound while embracing new styles. On their strangest track, they interpret a “Chinese New Year” as a gong-heavy chanting march. However, they also experiment with different guitar styles, at various times posing as Buckethead (“Uzbekistan”), Slash (“Cellophane”) and Incubus circa “Morning View” (“I, the Swan”).

It’s fun, it’s nuts, it’s disorienting, it doesn’t always stick. In an effort to leave us wanting more, the band sometimes feels rushed not to understay their welcome. For instance, before the hard rock guitar antics kick in, “Cellophane” sounds like one of the most gently gorgeous songs Cursive never wrote. Unfortunately the low-tempo, dare I say pretty, movement featuring Thom York-esque falsetto is never carried through to fruition and instead feels hurried into the heavier half which similarly does not get its due.

This scatter-shot technique of blending tempos, time signatures and vocalists sometimes makes tracks on “The Ocean and the Sun” sound more like teasers for several song than complete, coherent musical ideas. But then, maybe that’s to be expected from a band which names one of their songs (“Lude”) after a character in “House of Leaves,” a book renowned for artistic merit and literal patchwork composition.

In fact, TSAF never sounds as good as on “The Heraldic Beak of the Manufacturers Medallion,” arguably the most straight-ahead track on the album. Balling and Green’s voices lilt in perfect complement over frenzied guitar and rapid fire drumming courtesy of Matt Embree and Chris Tsagakis (both of Rx Bandits). Other songs have the excitement of “The Heraldic Beak” (“Another Leather Lung” comes to mind), but only on this one is that excitement sustained for the entire track.

It would be easy to think of “The Ocean and the Sun” as a missed opportunity. But then it would also have been easy for the vastly-talented artists of TSAF to overindulge. As it stands, this collection of songs is driving and powerful and leaves the listener looking for more.