In March 2006, Earl Greyhound, a then-unknown three-piece act from Brooklyn, released their debut LP, “Soft Targets.” A collection of ten tunes born from the dregs and dynamics of ’70s guitar-driven hard rock, the record demonstrated the band’s uncanny ability to blend past with present, sprinkling a simple wave of cacophony with the froth of highly imaginative, self-effacing songwriting. Here was a power trio that embodied the aesthetics of classic rock vintage without sacrificing their ambition or integrity.

Earl Greyhound skates a fine line between imitation and authenticity, but they never veer into the ironic, masturbatory musings of their laughable contemporaries. The band fashions its sonic spaces after Cream and Black Sabbath’s bluesy, metallic stylings, but singer and guitarist Matt Whyte’s Lenny Kravitz-esque croon provides the band with the power-pop sensibilities of Badfinger or Supertramp. Whyte tempers his guitar lines perfectly, never succumbing to the intoxicating allures of the extinct guitar solo to distract him from riding the wave of contemporary alternative rock. Bassist Kamara Thomas weathers the storm, hiding a set of potent pipes that easily outmatch Whyte’s, especially on the frequent occasions when the two trade vocals la Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris. Drummer Ricc Sheridan’s chaotic, thunderous rhythms evoke Bonham and Baker, but his turbulent drumming never escapes the commanding confines of Whyte and Thomas’ vocal and instrumental interplay. Earl Greyhound’s explosive sound is relentless but never decadent, inventive but never pretentious, boisterous but always modest.

After developing an underground following from their first release, Earl Greyhound built clout around a stunningly heroic, balls-out live show that included notable appearances at SXSW in 2007 and All Points West in 2008. After spending nearly two years recording and debuting songs from their sophomore release, Earl Greyhound made the entire record available for streaming on their website not quite four weeks ago.

Having already heard several of the album’s tracks through live shows and promotional downloads, I still found “Suspicious Package” a considerably vigorous, imaginative record, boasting a range of musical styles well-suited to Earl Greyhound’s faculties. Expanding beyond ’70s guitar-heavy territory, “Suspicious Package” finds the band incorporating elements of post-rock, acid jazz, Afro-Cuban, punk, and ambient music, refining their sound to new, constructive heights.

This blend of styles appears most readily in the album’s blockbuster two-part opener, “Eyes Of Cassandra,” a six-and-a-half-minute psychedelic descent into composed chaos. A lone Rhodes piano introduces several ethereal chords into a dimly lit midnight haze as light splashes of cymbals adorn Kamara Thomas’s haunting swoon. Bursting out of the stillness, a chorus of world-flavored percussion amuses itself for half a minute before introducing the song’s rhythmic backbone: a pounding bass line showered with faint, spacey keyboards. The next four minutes see Whyte and Thomas building the song in perfect harmony as they consistently remind us that “you cannot hide from the eyes of Cassandra,” invoking the tragic, mythological Greek prophetess of the same name. Eventually the song reaches its climactic breaking point as Thomas explodes from the harmony to shriek the “I cannot hide” refrain, receiving a soaring response moments later from Whyte’s guitar. “Eyes Of Cassandra” functions as the perfect album opener, immersing the listener in the gamut of the album’s impulsive dimensions at no expense to the song’s cohesion.

The remainder of the album’s A side proves just as powerfully uncompromising, as tracks like “Oye Vaya” and “Ghost And The Witness” explore the band’s knack for unassuming, radio-friendly hooks—although the latter borrows a little too readily from the Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows” for its centerpiece riff. “Shotgun,” the album’s most apparent single, sets the stage for Kamara Thomas’s Amazonian voice as harmonizing guitars and a steady bass trade red-hot, operatic licks toward a subtle yet wholly satisfying finale. “Holy Immortality” theatrically blends prog with razor-sharp guitars as Sheridan continually reminds us of his versatility and raw power as the song unfolds.

Several tracks on “Suspicious Package” border on filler, especially the oddly frenetic “Sea Of Japan” and the stunningly simple “Black Sea Vacation” -- although the latter features Whyte at his most eccentric, both as a guitarist and vocalist. “Bill Evans,” though surprisingly straightforward, stands out as one of the finer, more multi-dimensional ballads in Earl Greyhound’s canon, and the semi-acoustic “Out Of Air” complements the former’s power balladry with some steadier splendor of its own.

The record’s purely epic closer, “Misty Morning,” revives some of the fragile moods of the B side with a raucous, ear-shattering surge of feral instrumentation overlaid with a poignant vocal solo from Thomas to cap off an album that was always hers to dominate. While “Soft Targets” may have demonstrated Sheridan and Whyte’s abilities in ways that sadly overshadowed Thomas, “Suspicious Package” is clearly her territory, and not once in the 11-song sequence do we forget it.

Although the B side appears to falter once or twice, the beefier tracks bolster “Suspicious Package” into what it is: a powerhouse of a record and a solid step-up for a band in need of its big break.