Porto has become a city with a growing reputation among music fans as a stop-off on the festival circuit since Primavera Sound decided to stage its annual sister festival there in 2012. It’s quite an eclectic mix of bands that have made the annual trip since its inception, but we don’t really get to hear much from the city’s indigenous music makers around these parts.

Formed in 2014, Indian Zephyr are a three-piece guitar/bass/synth/drum outfit from the city on Portugal’s northwest coast, here recruiting a guest sticksman for two of their debut EP’s three tracks. As increasingly varied as their home town’s musical landscape has become, the spark of inspiration doesn’t seem to have rubbed off on the band, as ‘Dead Sonata’ melds into one drawn-out morass of generic derivations, and yet another Ian Curtis-aping frontman sings over faux-psych, shoegaze and rock.

Year After Year provides a forceful start and a portentous vocal, laying down that Joy Division/Interpol sonic template. White Royals adds a dancier element, with synths and syncopated programmed drums leading. The deep vocal takes on a spoken intonation in the mid-section, becoming a grungier affair and pointing towards a more hard rock direction than the New Order arena it seems to aspire to.

Full Moon tips its hat more to Afghan Whigs than anything else – a strange hybrid of grunge and heavy rock, and another spoken lyrical section that paves the way for more of the same of the high, echo-y guitar notes that characterise the EP.

It’s downbeat stuff throughout ‘Dead Sonata’, even when the band is upping the momentum. The trouble is that it’s all largely uninspired, laden down with nondescript reverb-soaked guitar. Songs drag on, one largely indistinguishable from the last, and such is the density and length of each it feels like small doses are the best way to digest this EP, if you can stomach it.