**1/2 Atari Teenage Riot

60 SECOND WIPE OUT

(DHR/Elektra)

The attraction of these German electropunks simmers with their exclamation-point-saturated DIY rabble rousing; their refusal to decide whether they want to be Slayer, Minor Threat, Public Enemy, Bikini Kill, or Throbbing Gristle; and the pulsing white-noise throb of chaos surrounding their every bell, whistle, breakbeat, and thrash riff -- a static jigsaw anti-sheen that puts them in a league with Japanese semiotic rock geniuses Guitar Wolf. In both cases, what you hear is a vaudeville on the subject of technology, a useful fiction in which all instruments and panels are overwhelmed by what the listener can only presume to be the superheroic, decibel-smashing, needle-pinning, rocking-ness of the players.

On 60 Second Wipe Out, ATR tone down their ADD theatrics for, oh, about 10 minutes. The album's first five songs -- from the straightforwardly punkish opener, "Revolutionary Action," to the Wu-style hip-hop of "Western Decay" -- are the group's most accessible to date. After that it's back to familiar territory: a race through "Too Dead for Me," which nicely co-opts their Beastie buddies' "Time for Livin' "; more self-promoting shout-outs than a Jon Spencer best-of; innocuous cameos by Kathleen Hannah and Fear Factory's guitarist; less-innocuous cameos by actual rappers the Arsonists; and a descent into maddeningly pastichy Merzbowisms, which by disc's end no longer shock, with all the predictable formalism of 1-2-3-4.

-- Carly Carioli