When the firebrand New Bomb Turks released their Scared Straight album last year, many fans took the final track for an homage to Exile on Main Street-era Rolling Stones.

So it was, said singer Eric Davidson -- but the swaggering "Wrest Your Hands" was also a purposeful nod to the Saints, Australia's seminal, late-'70s punk outfit.

Davidson, one of the most historically-minded singers in modern punk, gives the Saints equal credit with the Stones for mixing elements of charging rock with traditional R&B. "The Saints could put horns in and it was pretty seamless," Davidson said. "It wasn't just a trick, there was real feel to it."

This month marks the first American CD release of Eternally Yours (Amsterdamned/Triple X) -- the Saints album that originally brought such blending to fruition -- as well as (I'm) Stranded, the band's scorching debut. Added to both discs are extra tracks, including ragged takes on Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep Mountain High," Connie Francis' "Lipstick On Your Collar" and the band's own "Do the Robot."

"I still think Stranded is probably one of the most obnoxious records that was ever recorded anywhere, at anytime," said Saints founder and singer Chris Bailey by phone from Holland. "It's funny because that wasn't our intention at the time. We were very serious. We thought we were making a very straight rock album.

"Sonically, it's raw," he added in a stately voice that clashes utterly against the snotty whine Bailey used 20 years ago. "We were just making a racket."

In 1977, the single "(I'm) Stranded" proved to be a very popular racket indeed, garnering the band an international hit and critical acclaim in the United States and Britain. Backed by Ed Kuepper's saber saw guitar jabs, Bailey dunked lyrics about being "far from home" in both desperation and defiance.

By the time the Saints recorded Eternally Yours the following year, they had integrated horns and harmonica into the ruckus on such stand-out tracks as "Know Your Product" and "Run Down," ably demonstrating that punk need not hinder itself with party-line adherence to simplicity.

"I shouldn't speak for Eddie, but it just seemed like the purely natural progression from where we started off as kids," Bailey said. "We were listening to a lot of blues music, listening to a shit load of R&B. Even though we were white immigrants on the far side of the planet, it was essentially black American music that both of us really liked a lot. It's absurd to me now that I was 15, wanting to be John Lee Hooker, but that's the thing."

Though Kuepper exited the band shortly after the release of Eternally Yours, Bailey has released several albums under the Saints banner since then, using a variety of different lineups. (In the '90s, Kuepper formed the Aints in opposition to Bailey's use of the original moniker.)

Today, with Bailey as the only original Saint left standing (he describes himself as "the dodgy old bastard"), the Saints soldier on. The band will release an album of new material called Howling in October, and Bailey said he hopes to mount a tour of the United States shortly thereafter.

Bailey said fans can expect a return to the racket with Howling. "Through the '90s I've been making fairly rustic, little folk-sounding records," he said. "Then a couple of years ago, I started to become interested in loud rock music, so I kick started the band again. If you're not familiar with what I've been doing recently, Howling sounds just like a Saints record. It's kind of just me indulging in noise. It's odd now that I'm 40 years old that I'm rediscovering that I actually quite like jumping up and down on stage and screaming and shouting, but that's what I do.

"At the end of the day," Bailey concluded, "rock 'n' roll is just a kind of release through hitting musical instruments very hard. And it does work. It's cheaper than therapy and twice as much fun." [Tues., Sept. 30, 1997, 9 a.m. PDT]