What a difference two years and a revolution make. When Pulnoc – the descendants of Czechoslovakia's underground heroes the Plastic People of the Universe – toured America in 1989, a highlight of the set was "It's Dangerous." With lyrics by dissident poet Martin Palous (a.k.a. Martin Algy), it was a thundering tableau of rage and self-doubt, reflecting life under rule-by-paranoia.

Today, the new Prague Spring is in bloom, Palous holds a government post, and "It's Dangerous" is the opening track on Pulnoc's American debut, City of Hysteria. For bassist-singer Milan Hlavsa, keyboardist Josef Janicek and guitarist-violist Jiri Kabes, all original members of the Plastic People, this album is the improbable dream come true – to make music freely and freely available. City of Hysteria's somber propulsion, Ragged Glory-meets-Goo guitars and vocal anguish also bear eloquent testimony to the Czech people's prolonged suffering and fighting spirit. "No One No Where" (a CD-only track) is ostensibly about a young girl listening for footsteps on her stairs, but what you hear in the band's brooding locomotion and vocalist Michaela Nemcova's stoicism is the desperate vigilance of a people waiting for salvation.

Sonically, the members of Pulnoc (pronounced "pool-notes") are proud acolytes of the Velvet Underground; their cover of "All Tomorrow's Parties" is so right it could be a "banana" album out-take. But in the songs written by Hlavsa with assorted Czech poet-associates, the band's VU-rooted hypno-throb becomes an exorcising trance dance, intoxicating in its ferocity and stunning in its confessional vigor, despite the language barrier (most of the songs are sung in Czech). "Nightmares" is a bloody vision of physical and spiritual mutilation, Hlavsa yowling hellishly as a snarling riff is repeated with mesmeric efficiency, while the martial rumble of "I Sweep but Don't Clean" climaxes with piano fisticuffs and Nemcova's death-angel vocals.

Fittingly, City of Hysteria features Pulnoc versions of two old Plastic People songs. "Destroying Angel (White Mushrooms)," about suicide as the last remaining freedom, echoes the Velvets' "Sunday Morning" with haunting accuracy. "Little Canary" is an artfully coded salute to the defiant artists who, like the Plastics and later Pulnoc, spoke out in the face of persecution: "Hey, dead canary/Sing those songs again/So my buddies at least/Will know the words." Here they are, finally on record – lest we forget. (RS 618)

DAVID FRICKE