What does it mean when the most abrasive, forward-looking and righteously angry rock album of the year comes from a bunch of

40-year-old Brits? And what does it say about the state of the music industry that their label dropped them rather than release it in the U.S.?

Primal Scream's fifth album, Xtrmntr — out here, finally, on Astralwerks — is the veteran group's most extreme and fully realized statement. Moving several steps beyond the moody dub atmospherics of 1997's Vanishing Point, the band's new sound appropriates slabs of dance music, free jazz, rock and techno to create a menacing landscape of rattling beats, thundering bass and crippling distortion, dotted with lyrics that evoke urban decay and social disgust.

Xtrmntr opens with "Kill All Hippies" a dense and propulsive shuffle that features Bobby Gillespie's taunting chant aimed at a counterculture that sold out to the highest bidder: "You've got the money, I've got the soul." But the album really snaps into focus with "Accelerator" (RealAudio excerpt), a blinding white-noise assault that recalls the blinding energy of American prefiguring punk-rockers the MC5 and the Stooges. Underneath the din, it's also a catchy tune, even if the only words that you can make out are shouts of "Come on!"

The rest of the album doesn't try to keep up with "Accelerator," immediately downshifting into the queasy, garbled electronics of the title track — a song that rumbles along like a Panzer tank through rubble-strewn streets, daring the listener not to feel sick. "Everyone's a prostitute," Gillespie spits, "there's no civil disobedience." Ominous stings, Gregorian chants, and looped beats power "Pills," a hip-hop track that devolves into a rant composed only of the words "sick" and "f---."

Even the instrumental, jazz-tinged "Blood Money" is uneasy listening, marrying a driving funk beat to a horn section whose cacophony evokes Sun Ra. One of the few grace notes on the album arrives with "Keep Your Dreams" (RealAudio excerpt), a gorgeously spacey ballad — but even this song, so sweet-sounding on the surface, begins with the line "I believe that syphilis can burn your soul away."

Call it a rock 'n' roll pose, but Primal Scream put across their attacks on fascist corporations ("Swastika Eyes") and military greed ("Exterminator" [RealAudio excerpt]) with just enough sincerity to avoid sounding ridiculous. The album's only serious misstep is the inclusion of two

not-so-very-different versions of "Swastika Eyes," an adequate

electro-pop nugget that's hardly worth hearing twice.

It's a testament to Primal Scream's artistry that an album this fueled by contempt is still compelling. Hats off also to their collaborators — the Automator, the Chemical Brothers, David Holmes, Adrian Sherwood, Bernard Sumner of New Order, and most crucially, My Bloody Valentine mastermind Kevin Shields, who contributes some astonishing guitar as well as a radical re-mix of 1997's "If They Move Kill 'Em" entitled "MBV Arkestra" (RealAudio excerpt). Extrmntr's uncompromising sound may scare off some listeners, but its blast of noxious air represents some much-needed fumigation in today's stagnant pop landscape.