Grapes of Wrathchild Yield Variety : Speed metal: This band has a penchant for the unpredictable, being able to downshift to slower rhythms as well as thrash.

The typical speed-metal band may break your eardrums, but it’s highly unlikely that it will break any of the rules of its own genre.

Sonically, speed-metal bands mainly try to approximate a train wreck in the making.

Thematically, the tendency is to play back the latest teen-exploitation slasher film fare, with lots of gore and deviltry. More serious metal bands--Metallica being the idiom’s brooding eminence--favor socially conscious lyrics expressing a baleful outlook several shades darker than Orwellian.

Wrathchild America, which plays Wednesday night at Bandstand in Anaheim, is one speed-metal band that brings a penchant for the unpredictable to this monolithic genre.

Based in Maryland and Virginia, the four-man band is able to chuckle as well as glower. Wrathchild does the impending train wreck stuff well, but its two albums show that it also can loosen up and play an Aerosmith-style boogie, a slow Pink Floyd number, or a “Peter Gunn”-style tune that sounds like a film noir theme and actually has some swing to it. Wrathchild’s new album, “3-D,” also quotes a Joe Walsh guitar gimmick and the 1973 Stealers Wheel folk-pop hit, “Stuck in the Middle With You.” In its most surprising departure from the norm, the band downshifts during one song from noisy, angry thrash to a slow, affirmative reggae rhythm.

Wrathchild may not reach the Technicolor Oz achieved by the metal-influenced Faith No More, but at least it manages to lift off every so often from the level plains of black and white where most of its speed-metal competitors dwell.

The title, “3-D,” reflects the band’s philosophy, said Wrathchild’s bassist and lead singer, Brad Divens, over the phone recently from a tour stop in Oklahoma City.

“It just comes from the fact that we use so many different influences in our music. We don’t write in one way. We incorporate all kinds of things around us to make up Wrathchild.”

Divens, 29, said his own biggest influence is Aerosmith’s front man, Steven Tyler. That shows in “No Deposit, No Return,” a song from Wrathchild America’s 1989 debut album, “Climbin’ the Walls,” which borrows freely from the rhythmic swagger and sexual braggadocio of “Walk This Way.” Divens said that the other members--guitarists Terry Carter and Jay Abbene and drummer Shannon Larkin--introduced him to the reggae music that turns up on the new album’s last song, “Parallel.” The band brings in the slow surge of reggae to add a note of hopeful struggle for change to an otherwise-bleak song.

Wrathchild is on tour with Pantera, a Texas band that plays a more conventional slash-and-burn style of metal. So far, Divens said, even audiences that thrive on slam-pit mayhem have been accepting Wrathchild’s departures.

“There is always that segment of the crowd that wants that,” he said of the conventional hard-and-fast approach. “I haven’t seen anybody slam in the reggae part yet, but people need that change now and then. Everything stops, and they’re checking out the band: ‘What are these guys doing?’ There are those people who want to slam and dive and be gung-ho the whole night, but I think they dig what we’re doing.”

Divens traces Wrathchild’s diversity to its early days on the club circuit in Maryland and West Virginia, where Carter and Larkin began the band in 1981. Divens joined in 1983 after a brief tenure with the heavy metal band, Kix, and Abbene arrived in 1984.

“If you wanted to play in our area, you had to do a lot of cover stuff,” Divens said. “We were doing everything from Metallica to Stray Cats and Billy Squier and Golden Earring.” The faster, harder speed-metal influence set Wrathchild apart, he said.

“We were the first band in our area to do Metallica, Accept and Motorhead in ‘83, when all those metal bands came about. Then we started doing punk--Black Flag and Circle Jerks. Anything to get people’s attention. We never did anything we didn’t like to play. A lot of times it got us fired from a club.”

Wrathchild toured independently for four years before it landed a record deal with Atlantic Records. During that time, Divens said, band members never considered leaving their Maryland base in favor of California, which spawned many of the top speed-metal bands.

“I would never want to move to the West Coast to get a band going. Too rough out there,” Divens said. “Too many bands. You’ve got to pay to play. That’s because there are so many bands and the clubs can get away with it. We figured it didn’t matter if we’re from the North Pole, if the material is good, they’ll sign us.”

Hell and horror, death and gore remain frequent themes for Wrathchild.

“Shannon and I are big fans of Stephen King and Clive Barker, and horror movies in general,” Divens said. “That just seems to come across a lot in our lyrics. We get inspired a lot by fantasy as opposed to reality.”

Some of the band’s lyrics hold up to closer scrutiny. “Desert Grins” may have nothing more than horror on its agenda as it depicts the hideous death of a man lost in the desert. Then again, there is a case to be made that it’s an ecological allegory decrying humanity’s vain assumption that it can flout the environment without suffering grim consequences.

Wrathchild’s strategy now calls for heavy touring as it tries to build an audience by word-of-mouth on the metal circuit.

“It seems each time we come through a town it gets a little better,” said Divens, who still works day jobs on the side when Wrathchild isn’t touring. “The ambition of the band is just to keep putting out records and have each one sell more than the rest. It has taken awhile, but it’s starting to work out. We’ve taken a couple of steps up the ladder. We are able to pay our bills. That’s not saying much, but we’re happy doing what we do.”

Wrathchild America, Pantera, Corruption and Cholera play Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Bandstand, 1721 S. Manchester Ave., Anaheim. Tickets: $13.50. Information: (714) 956-1412.