Tesla Serves Up Tasty Chops, Little Brain Food : ** 1/2 TESLA “Psychotic Supper” <i> Geffen</i>

Refreshed by the quieter pause of last year’s live “Five Man Acoustical Jam,” Tesla is back with a persuasively brawny rock-out (in stores now) that should move it closer to the top of the hard-rock pecking order.

The instrumental charge led by the fine guitar duo of Tommy Skeoch and Frank Hannon is tough and to the point, all substance and no empty show. But “Psychotic Supper,” the Sacramento band’s fourth album after three previous million-sellers, is only half satisfying.

The weak link is singer-lyricist Jeff Keith. Instead of riding the band’s wave, Keith strains against it with his stringy-throated, cat-screech yowl. Given a gutsy, nuanced voice in the tradition of Roger Daltrey or Paul Rodgers, Tesla might have soared. Instead, it is saddled with this callow heir to Humble Pie-era Steve Marriott.

Keith also fails to give Tesla anything distinctive to say. Trying to proclaim a sense of mission for his generation in “Change in the Weather,” he lapses into banalities:

We’re the children of the ‘60s, watch the ‘70s go by

Now we made it through the ‘80s, my how time does fly.

It doesn’t get much better than that. Keith sounds more authentic when bashing the PMRC, or delivering a lighter song like “Toke About It,” an ode to the aphrodisiac properties of pot.

It’s the hard-hitting, frequently catchy, and surprisingly varied music that’s worth latching on to. Tesla knows its Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple well (the racing guitar duel on “Don’t De-Rock Me” recalls the high-octane burn of Purple’s “Highway Star”). But it also can quote the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd (“Toke About It” is a spirited theft of Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”). And the epic “Song and Emotion” features a guitar-as-bagpipe droned coda that few other metal bands would have attempted. Gone are the puffed-up pop-metal harmonies of past studio efforts, replaced by the real grit that defines the album.