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Atlanta's Sevendust play the currently popular brand of rock that seethes with heavy-metal unhappiness and jolts with hip-hop disequilibrium. Home, their breakout album, steers an intelligently reliable middle course in the genre while operating within a faintly arty framework of hardness: Like Tool, Sevendust are lucid but intense. Their songs deplore communication breakdowns and look for salvation. On the skate hymn "Waffle," singer Lajon Witherspoon's strong voice gathers clarity and even soul. He's equally effective on "Licking Cream," a sensational tango with Skunk Anansie's lead singer, Skin. Witherspoon spits in the eye of his own attraction, maintaining, "I wish you weren't so beautiful in my eyes" as she reels off a mad string of wild arias; in Sevendust's genre, life is never just a cool romance. (RS 824)

JAMES HUNTER