*** NEW BOMB TURKS AT ROPE'S END

(Epitaph)

Ohio's New Bomb Turks are always looking for ways to rock harder, and with At Rope's End they've found a curious one: half the album was recorded in Sweden with Tomas Skogsberg, a death-metal producer who's recorded the likes of Entombed. It's another kick in the ass for the Turks, who are already plenty hard enough -- they're essentially an old-fashioned rock-and-roll band who picked up from punk that what they did would sound better if they played it three times as fast. The disc careers out of the gate with three of their strongest, fastest tracks ever, especially the levitational "Snap Decision." The album slips a bit later, with delusions of Stones-hood on a few tracks, like "Raw Law," which features Darchelle Williams doing the "Gimme Shelter" background-vocal thing. When you decode Eric Davidson's mangled yowls, you can discover that his lyrics are great the way Aerosmith's used to be, as sly and pensive as they're cocky: "Sorrow lies waiting like a lucky black cat/It's me that I'm hating. How about that?"

-- Douglas Wolk