Since Living Colour tore down the invisible Whites Only sign and crashed the rock world's private party four years ago, only a handful of black rock groups has followed in its footsteps. That's due more to entrenched music-biz biases than to any dearth of good black bands; still, the industry-wide apartheid does seem to be cracking as selected black rockers are admitted to the club. In the forefront is Follow for Now, an Atlanta quintet with a wide-ranging mastery of rock styles. At various points on its impressive debut album, FFN brings to mind artists as diverse as Cream ("Ms. Fortune," a track notable for its monster bass riff and snaking, voluptuous guitar lines), Love ("Time," a reflective ballad about aging), Anthrax ("Milkbone," a rap-tinged mosh-pit anthem) and Public Enemy, whose anti-television diatribe "She Watch Channel Zero" is thrashed.

But these guys are neither facile copyists nor calculating dilettantes, and Follow for Now hangs together far better than most of the current crop of so-called funk & roll records. Three-minute nuggets like the euphoric "6's and 7's" and the bigot-bashing "White Hood" demonstrate FFN's pop smarts, but the band can't resist pushing the envelope. On "Fire and Snakes," the album's strangest song FFN seduces the listener into taking a surreal, eight-minute journey down the back roads of Funkytown. That kind of persuasiveness translates into star quality. The black-rock revolution is at hand, and FFN is helping to lead the charge. (RS 618)

TOM SINCLAIR