Living Colour's 1988 debut, Vivid, was one of the most promising – and, with over one and a half million copies sold, one of the most successful – rookie efforts in recent years. Too often, however, Vivid flattened the band's sound into a repetitious funk-metal fusion; the album may have established a marketing identity for Living Colour as the "black Led Zeppelin," but it failed to capture the mind-blowing musical range and groove-making power of a group known for delivering slamming in-concert covers of Bad Brains, James Brown and Tracy Chapman.

Living Colour's second album, Time's Up, represents the fulfillment of the band's promise. A year of touring clubs behind Vivid and an additional stint opening for the Rolling Stones in stadiums have paid off big time: The group's songs, which on Vivid had frequently seemed a series of brilliant but loosely connected flashes – usually courtesy of guitar wizard Vernon Reid – are now tightly constructed and coherent, the passionate work of a unified band. Ever since Living Colour's earliest days, Reid has been the group's central focus and resident genius, and his sublime, angular screech is still present in full effect. But singer Corey Glover's range and expressiveness skyrocketed during the time on the road, and bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will Calhoun have become an airtight rhythm section.

Though he produced both albums, Ed Stasium wisely changed strategy for Time's Up, recording the group for the most part live in the studio. It takes only seconds to notice the difference: The leadoff title track, a careening hardcore vision of impending apocalypse, kicks like the band at its furious onstage best. Meanwhile, standing at the album's center is a matched set of paranoid urban visions: "Type," the first single, and "Information Overload." The complicated rhythms match the terrified words – "Sometimes I wish I couldn't feel" – upping the intensity until it becomes impossible, and irrelevant, to distinguish between the funk, metal, pop and poetic elements.

Despite the group's platinum sales, Living Colour remains an outspoken black band in a white rock & roll world. Skillings's "Someone Like You" is a swaggering blast of inner-city rage, addressed to those who "forgot us and let the drug lord take our street." There's a confidence in Glover's voice and a pop in Calhoun's drum that back up the chorus's threat, "I know what to do with someone like you."

"Someone Like You" is edgily coupled with Reid's "New Jack Theme," the story of an arrogant young drug dealer living large and making no excuses, more than content to exploit his own community. This pairing adds a rounded dimension to each song's portrayal of a neighborhood's oppression. Living Colour still passes off generalizations for insight, but the broader view defined in these songs comes across through sheer conviction.

The album's finest moment is "Elvis Is Dead," an off-the-wall musing on "pimps making money" from Presley sightings. Little Richard contributes a characteristically histrionic guest rap and James Brown's sax player Maceo Parker offers a scorching solo, while the band locks into its unique brand of controlled chaos, sliding and screaming and still rocking the joint.

The real surprise, though, is that the heart of this album of conscience is an unsettling trio of songs about love. Love, as described by Living Colour, has extraordinary power, a power that makes it compelling but also confusing and frightening. "Love Rears Its Ugly Head" is a funny, funky saga of unexpected romance, featuring a slithery Reid wah-wah solo. More disturbing is Glover's "Under Cover of Darkness," a tense meditation on love's uncertainties that features a perfectly integrated rap by Queen Latifah. The song's skittery, constricted arrangement highlights the band's previously buried jazz inflections.

"Solace of You," the album's penultimate track, has a percolating township-jive groove built on Reid's shimmering guitar. It sounds like a simple "love conquers all" ditty, but the South African overtones add substance to lines like "They can hurt me, jail my body/I'll still be free." After "Solace," you might expect a final kick in the head, a blowout closing number. Instead, Time's Up ends with "This Is the Life," a moody reaffirmation of the need to keep struggling with the personal and social dilemmas documented throughout the album.

The conclusion – that all we can do is live the life we've got and work to improve it – may not be triumphant, but it is realistic and honest, conceding nothing to Hollywood optimism or romanticized angst. It's a realization reached by a band that has persevered and, against great odds, come out on top. The challenge of a second record is to avoid formula, and this spectacular album is a tribute to Living Colour's bravery. Angrier, deeper, louder, more alive than Vivid, Time's Up is an uncompromising declaration of subversive intent by a band that means to hang in for the long haul – and to make a difference. (RS 586)

ALAN LIGHT