Not surprisingly, since it’s the first release from Red Cities’ debut full-length, “Military Song” feels like an artful, album-ready version of the Lincoln punk-rock band.

The LP is set for an August 23 release at Zoo Bar and was recorded at Fuse Recording Studios in Lincoln with Charlie Johnson. The self-titled effort will be released on Modern Peasant Records, a label Red Cities guitarist Matt Bokovoy helps operate.

While the middle of the song boasts the kind of purist punk speed and crunch on which Red Cities has hung its big black hat the last few years, the song opens and closes with an almost operatic refrain: the character-spelling aria of a young man (Red Cities’ singer Byron Anway, in this case) explaining transient life in a military family.

In turn, the song’s middle burst seems to be the expression, perhaps the expulsion of several emotions: oppression, impermanence and — follow me here, if you’ve never heard Red Cities — anger.

During the song’s bookends, dual guitarists Anway and Bokovoy make the most of their instrumental redundancy, using their dark electric guitars to create sheer volume and soundstage height, as opposed to the texture of distance they usually employ while strumming quickly together.

“Military Song” isn’t the first time Anway’s youth in a military family has come up in Red Cities music. In an interview on Hear Nebraska FM last year, Anway noted that the title of Red Cities debut EP Built It Up | Tear It Down was a reference to the effect he sees military service as having on individuals.

Listen to the premiere of “Military Song” here: