While Boston is now better known as the home of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, in the '80s it was a veritable punk-rock mecca. At the forefront of the Beantown music scene were Mission of Burma. Burma merged punk fury with angular art damage, making prescient forays into funk and noise while dipping their toes into the waters of pop hooks on tracks like "Academy Fight Song" and "That's When I Reach for My Revolver." Their legacy proved highly influential, with bands ranging from R.E.M. and Soul Asylum to Big Black and the Spinanes left holding the torch after Burma's demise, in 1983.

Drummer Peter Prescott, often responsible for Burma's most out-there material, resurfaced with Volcano Suns, who combined his former group's experimentation with louder, trashier thrills. In 1991 the Suns, too, disbanded, just as punk rock was beginning its ascent into the Top 40. Prescott, however, has returned to fill any void he might have left, moving from drums to vocals and guitar for his newest sonic-assault project, Kustomized.

A Boston post-punk supergroup of sorts, Kustomized feature ex-Bullet LaVolta singer Kurt Davis on drums, with the other members – bassist Bob Moses and guitarist Ed Yazijian – hailing from unsung combos like Busted Statues and High Risk Group. On their first full-length LP, Prescott and crew strip down the music to its most brutal common denominator, which results in the jackhammer stop-start hooks of "The Day I Had Some Fun" and the raw rockabilly guitar stylings of "33 1/3" that teeter between the lunatic and the sublime.

Befitting their roots, Kustomized rock with an almost anachronistic set of '80s post-punk influences, indicated in the three-chord monte of "Puff Piece," with its yelled chants of "1-2-X-U" that come direct from Wire's punk-era masterpiece Pink Flag. Yet this doesn't feel like nostalgia; instead it seems more like a natural continuation of values and styles that Prescott and company had a hand in forming.

In terms of influence, however, post-punk avatars Joy Division – more than any other group – loom over The Battle for Space (Kustomized, in fact, covered the gloom kings' "Dead Souls" on a previous EP). The Joy Division legacy comes to a head most powerfully on "The Place Where People Meet," a song that faithfully replicates that band's thundering bass drones and haunting guitar spirals to great effect. Peter Prescott doesn't approach Ian Curtis' profound angst in his frivolous lyrics – "You were even cuter than a test pattern" is a typical line – yet the primal propulsion of the music more than compensates.

Ultimately, Kustomized's music proves more satisfying than that of their arena-ready neopunk contemporaries: While maintaining an almost savage drive, the band is unafraid to wander into the bizarre areas outside rock convention. With the recent onrush of over-30 bands like Kustomized and Guided by Voices providing real innovation in punk-derived music, those Young Turks in Green Day and the Offspring better watch their backs. (RS 706)

MATT DIEHL