As the shaman of agonized art metal, first fronting Jane's Addiction and now Porno for Pyros, Perry Farrell makes discomfiting Beat poetry out of the blips that cross the screen of his unsavory imagination. It's not enough to point out that drugs, seamy sex and despair are among his favored motifs – in themselves, these subjects are merely the standard currency of pop emotion. But in Farrell's hands they resonate; his approach to lyrics owes less to a song-writing tradition than to a literary one. He comes at his subjects obliquely, burying a song's driving passion beneath a mundane surface that shock-tactic music, alternately hypnotic and jagged, tears away.

Porno for Pyros dabbles in straightforward song styles, but not for long – this is one impatient record, leaping from angst to resignation to fury within a few bars. Former Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins remains Farrell's most valuable asset; his versatile percussion can recoil from the lyrics, underscore them or provide a jolting contradiction. Guitarist Peter Di-Stefano has the slyness to keep up with his cohorts. That said, nothing on Porno sounds much different from Jane's Addiction, and the sameness is disappointing.

Where Porno betters Jane's is in the songwriting. Although there are incomplete thoughts ("Blood Rag." "Pets") and leave-it-in-a-drawer freshman poesy ("Orgasm"), most of the lyrics are challenging and evocative. A fever dream of racial lust and fear, "Black Girlfriend" is so confused that neither the singer nor the listener can take a stand on it, and "Packin' .25" rages sardonically, asking, "No one there to serve you/Why not be the hero?" "Meija" is like an issue of Love and Rockets commix put to music, a minimum of words sketching a lifetime of Los Angeles squalor. Like L.A. itself, Perry Farrell's mind may not be pretty, but it's worth a visit. (RS 660/661)

ARION BERGER