At times, 'Social Distortion' looks and sounds like the place where old skinheads go to die. The back-cover photo of the album finds the Los Angeles quartet posing like mannequins at a rockabilly wax museum. And the pumped-up music inside could snidely be called corporate punk: all blustery, cleanly recorded AOR guitars and precise drums, with only token nods to anything vaguely resembling the band's hardcore roots.

Then again, Social Distortion was always a little out of step with the leather-and-swastika crowd. On its two preceding indie albums, the band lurched from commonplace head bangers to almost country-hued rockers, remaking Creedence and Stones songs along the way. The latest turn in the band's evolution – besides the slickness of its new sound – is lead guitarist Mike Ness's role as repentant outlaw. In the past, mainly on 1988's Prison Bound, Ness wallowed in bad-boy tales of depravity and semiredemption. On Social Distortion, he's lamenting dead fast-lane friends ("It Coulda Been Me"), writing a punk antinarcotics song ("Drug Train"), complaining about squandered opportunities ("Story of My Life") and even indulging in a sentimental lost-love ode ("A Place in My Heart").

If this were a singer-songwriter album, in other words, it would be unbearable. But Ness's guitar playing is pure adrenalin, and his knack for gutsticking melodies, like the punk Merseybeat of "So Far Away" and the near-metal swagger of "She's a Knockout," lends even his most clichéd lyrics a kick. The other band members don't appear to have the same gasoline in their veins; as a result, Social Distortion's remake of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" is strictly paint by numbers. But even during the weaker moments, Ness relentlessly hogs the spotlight, leveling everything in sight with obnoxious guitar leads and brusque vocals straight out of 1977-era Clash. For aging punks, there have been far worse fates. (RS 581)

DAVID BROWNE