Naming their seventh album Great American Music may be the only way veteran Long Island bar band the Good Rats will ever call attention to the fact that they've been making terrific American rock & roll for over a decade. By forging songwriter-lead vocalist Peppi Marchello's snappily offbeat hooks and wolfish howls on a neo-heavy-metal anvil of raucous guitars and robust rhythms, the Rats have developed a formidable and intoxicating sound that's one of rock's best-kept secrets.

Commercially, Great American Music might succeed where recent Good Rats records like From Rats to Riches and Birth Comes to Us All haven't, because the group has finally captured on vinyl both the hardy rock & roll spirit of its songs and the combustible crunch it musters in concert. "Julie" moves to a strident 6/4 beat, while "Audience" is built on a remarkably catchy hook hung on the rather unwieldy phrase "two-hankie tear-jerker." "On My Way to School" is a simple tune of childhood past. These numbers are cranked out with the same urgency as the hamfisted raver "New York Survivor" and the celebratory "Great American Music Halls," in which Marchello manages to catch the entire touring experience in a four-minute microcosm. Even the LP's one ballad, "Oh So Good," holds its own on the strength of Marchello's fiery vocal and the aggressive guitars of his brother Mickey and new recruit Bruce Kulick.

What comes through loudest and clearest on Great American Music is the Rats' unshakable commitment to the music they play. As Peppi Marchello shouts in "Rock and Roll Point of View": "It's a way of life for a lucky few/It's a love affair and I must be true T?? rock & roll good-time po?? view." Everybody hou?? to their first love as the Goo?? are to theirs. (RS 347)

DAVID FRICKE