***1/2 Guitar Wolf

PLANET OF THE WOLVES

(Matador)

At just the moment you might expect the novelty of Guitar Wolf's no-fi scumbucket greaser rock & booze revue to wear off, along comes Planet of the Wolves, for which someone apparently tricked the Japanese threesome into entering a professional studio. It's also something approaching a greatest-hits package -- both their own (reworkings of past faves "Invader Ace," "Buttobase," and "Kung Fu Ramone") and other people's (the Stones' "Satisfaction," Link Wray's "Rumble," the Oblivians' "Motorcycle Leather Boy," and Teengenerate's brilliant "Let's Get Hurt"). In the past, Guitar Wolf have made a sound like what you might have caught in 1954 upon hearing rock and roll for the first time -- an assaultive sound that refused to make sense yet insisted on being heard and defied you to understand. This time the opening slashing chords announce themselves as glass-shard sharp as the Stooges, ferocious instead of just messy. This is the payoff, where what they make sounds like great rock and roll -- is great rock and roll -- instead of mimicking the confusion and chaos that often accompanies it.

-- Carly Carioli