Hunters and Collectors may just be too resolutely Australian to ever make it in America. Melbourne's finest radiate a long-limbed macho sensuality shaped by years of hard-driven pub crawling, and their very name suggests some brutish boys club where subtlety is forsaken for pummeling force. Even the cover of Fate, the septet's fifth American release, shows off lead singer Mark Seymour's gleaming forearm and bicep like some MTV version of the Arm & Hammer baking-soda logo. Yet, as with other Australian power gods, such as Midnight Oil and the Divinyls, the Hunters have got much more on their nimble minds than rock & roll hedonism.

Bassist John Archer and drummer John Falconer lay down a bed of tough, sandblasted funk rhythms over which Seymour howls like a wounded banshee, while the horn section's big blasts underscore the feel of unbridled primitivism. Certainly, the first impressions on such tracks as "Do You See What I See?," "You Can Have It All" and the harmonica-soaked "What Are You Waiting For?" are of a band reveling in its musical muscularity. But Seymour and company are aware that there's more to being a man than beefcake bravado; the lyrics display an intelligence that acts as a forceful counterpoint to the spine-snapping beat. Seymour could probably throttle Morrissey within an inch of his fragile life, but underneath the bluster he's equally as concerned about the state of the modern world.

"Do You See What I See?" and "Under the Sun (Where I Come From)" are snapshots of rootless Australian suburbia, while "You Can Have It All" is an ironic attack on wanton consumerism. Unfortunately, two of the Hunters' best socially conscious tracks – "Breakneck Road," which supports New Zealand's decision to deny landing rights to nuclear-loaded U.S. ships, and "What's a Few Men?," a plaintive attack on English indifference during wartime when Australian lives were at stake – are only available on the CD and cassette versions of Fate. They are far stronger than such weak-kneed album tracks as "Back on the Breadline" and "Faraway Man," two obvious attempts at crossover. Still, Fate deserves a better fate than previous Hunters releases, which quickly expired under the crushing weight of public indifference. (RS 539)

CARY DARLING