minutes; Rancid's sonic reduction leaves only rip chords, thundering double-time drums, and shout-along choruses screamed with desperate abandon by Rancid vocalists Tim Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen. Life Won't Wait's experimentation hasn't totally dissipated: "Let Me Go" gets wacky with the wah-wah pedal, and "Radio Havana" finds Rancid as dub-wise as ever. Solos aren't forbidden, either -- on "Axiom," bassist Matt Freeman arpeggiates like John Entwistle on speed.

This being old-school punk, the words tend toward topicality. "Rigged on a Fix" flips the bird to all those game-show junkies who want to be millionaires; "Rwanda," meanwhile, starts out like a great Cheap Trick song -- that is, if Cheap Trick wrote songs about genocide in Africa. "It's Quite Alright" is an anarcho-crusty revise of Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." Over a pop-punk rhythm guitar buzzing like a fighter plane swooping in for the kill, Armstrong affectingly howls that "the end of the world will set me free, and that's all right, it's quite all right with me."

With Rancid, the band's mix of American thrash minimalism and Brit punk's sound and fury have transcended revivalist mimicry once and for all. The result is a brutally exuberant rock album. When Armstrong sings, "Let me go just one last time," on "Let Me Go," it's a most heart-rending moment of punk poignancy. Before you know it, the album is over. In the words of the late Johnny Thunders, you can't put your arms around a memory, but you never want to let go of music this powerful. (RS 848)

MATT DIEHL