Eats Darkness, the third full-length from Apostle of Hustle, boasts a heavier sound than on their previous records. Those expecting an album that pushes boundaries will be disappointed to find that Eats Darkness stumbles through some darker, but mostly familiar material. The album begins with the track “Eazy Speaks”—homage to the late Eazy E—that, despite its catchiness, does little more than revel in its own insinuated irony, while similar pop numbers “Soul Unwind” and “Xerses” serve up some inoffensive indie vanilla. The dub-influenced “Perfect Fit” means well but is an awkward interjection in an already patchy amalgamation of material. The album’s audio-collage interludes offer brief glimpses of the band’s cut-and-paste hip-hop influence, but machine gun sound effects and cartoon-like vocal samples ultimately come off as banal.

Eats Darkness is described by lead composer and Broken Social Scene guitarist Andrew Whiteman as being “like tapas at the banquet of conflict.” With its array of different, sometimes clashing morsels, the album certainly holds true to this aesthetic as it rounds out at a quick 35 minutes and seems to have been haphazardly slapped together in a post-siesta haze.