Bands Give a Backward Glance With New Releases : Agent Orange and the former members of T.S.O.L. revisit the punk boom, Honk reaches back to its musical roots, and Stryper offers a retrospective.

Today’s column of local album reviews takes a look backward. New live releases from Agent Orange and the original T.S.O.L. recapitulate music that came out of the ‘80s Orange County punk rock boom; Honk’s live return reaches back to the band’s early ‘70s origins, and Stryper, the biggest-selling Orange County rock band of the ‘80s, offers a retrospective album as its first release on a new label. Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent). Three stars is a solid recommendation.

*** Agent Orange “Real Live Sound” (Restless)

As the last song on Agent Orange’s last studio album faded out, leader Mike Palm bid adieu to his audience but promised that “this is not the end.” Five years later, delayed by business problems and personnel changes, Palm and his band finally have made good on that vow. While hardly a new beginning (recorded in July, 1990, it contains no material written after 1986), “Real Live Sound” offers a spirited run through one of the strongest, most consistent song catalogues to have come out of the Southern California punk scene.

Palm’s songs hold up precisely because they aren’t stereotypical hard-core punk. Instead of screaming in anger over blindly racing beats, Agent Orange always constructed rock songs that harnessed punk energy to catchy melodies and coherent riffs.

The 12 original songs and four covers on “Real Live Sound” are uniformly dark and driving. But strong material (not a bad song in the bunch) and exceptional playing from the revamped trio (Palm on guitar and vocals, with Social Distortion alumni Brent Liles and Derek O’Brien on bass and drums) keep sameness from setting in. Virtually every important cut from Agent Orange’s two studio albums is here. The only glaring omission is “Living in Darkness,” the fine title track of the band’s 1981 debut. Also missed are the biographical and critical notes that would have been appropriate for this retrospective release.

The cover choices here point to a wide range of sources--another key reason why Agent Orange’s music, like Social Distortion’s, has outlived the punk scene that generated it. There is Orange County surf music (the Chantays’ “Pipeline”), psychedelic ‘60s rock (“Somebody to Love” by the Jefferson Airplane), a rumbling Dead Kennedys number, “Police Truck,” and, as a final encore, the old rock ‘n’ roll chestnut “Shakin’ All Over.”

One original, “Tearing Me Apart,” joins a long line of three-chord knockoffs of the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” riff. “I Kill Spies” appropriates another Ray Davies number, “Sunny Afternoon,” but draws the blinds and reworks it into a musical film noir.

Much of Agent Orange’s catalogue dwells in desperation, relieved by the occasional anthem that struggles toward hope. Palm does justice to the drama and anxiety in the songs without overplaying those emotions. Instead, the sense of good-natured fun in his introductions carries over into the performances.

Producer Thom Panunzio’s mix turns an exuberant crowd into a fourth musical element--supplying a wave of sound beneath the band, or surging to fill in spaces in the music. It may have been fine-tuned through after-the-fact studio knob-twisting, but it enhances the recording’s sense of live excitement.

Of course, an eon in pop time has gone by since the songs on “Real Live Sound” were written. But even though this album doesn’t say anything about where Agent Orange is headed, it gives the band’s past the strong summation it deserves.

* Agent Orange plays Friday at Bogart’s in the Marina Pacifica mall, 6288 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach. (The band now has Sam Bolle on bass and Scott Lund on drums). Information: (213) 594-8975.

** Jack Grisham, Mike Roche, Ron Emory, Todd Barnes “Live ‘91” (Triple X)

While Agent Orange’s live recapitulation whets an appetite for new work to come, this look backward by the four original members of T.S.O.L. is clearly a last gasp.

Over the past two years, Grisham, Roche, Emory and Barnes (who can’t call themselves T.S.O.L. because a current edition of the band led by Joe Wood and Mitch Dean has legal control of the name) have played a series of shows catering to nostalgic former punks and to newcomers drawn by tales of chaotic, charismatic stage shows back in the long-gone good old days.

T.S.O.L. may have been a kinetic experience during the original lineup’s run (1980-’83) but it didn’t produce a lot of enduring music. Half of the 14 short songs here go back to T.S.O.L.’s earliest, least melodic thrash-punk style; the rest are Gothic gloom and horror pieces that are more developed musically but only occasionally memorable. The best tracks here are “Triangle,” a good spy tale; “Wash Away,” the romantic plaint that is the only song culled from the original T.S.O.L.’s best album, “Beneath the Shadows,” and “Code Blue,” with its sick-humor take on necrophilia.

Singer Grisham gives reasonably engaged performances, although a large part of his agenda consists of rousing the rabble between songs with half-cranky, half-cheerful chiding. T.S.O.L. may have won him his following, but Grisham’s real musical mark has been made over the past five years with his far superior current band, Tender Fury.

Emory’s charged guitar playing gives the music the clout it needs. The problem isn’t that the foursome plays badly; it’s that there is no reason, other than nostalgia, to revive most of this dated material. By not including a current photo of the band members, Triple X’s packaging concedes that the original T.S.O.L. belongs strictly to the past (again, liner notes recalling that past would have been helpful). Fans will enjoy a good selection of pictures from the old days taken by punk-scene photo chronicler Ed Colver.

** 1/2 Honk “Coach House Live” (Restless)

Honk was Orange County’s leading rock contender during its day, but this reunion album--the band’s first release since its breakup in 1975--doesn’t succumb to the nostalgic impulse. Half the album is devoted to new material that stands up well alongside the old stuff.

With three members supplying songs, there isn’t much of a common agenda here, other than an emphasis on good singing and strong musicianship.

Guitarist Richard Stekol is Honk’s folk-rocker, supplying the band’s most reflective material which includes a good oldie, “Don’t Let Your Good-Bye Stand,” and two strong new numbers, the Jackson Browne-ish “Every Part of Love” and “Coloured Water” (culled from Stekol’s excellent recent solo album, but sung sweetly here by Beth Fitchet).

When saxophonist Craig Buhler steps out on his breezy instrumental, “Summer,” it sounds as if Kenny G or Spyro Gyra suddenly has taken over the stage for some lightweight jazz-pop.

Steve Wood, the band’s best singer and strongest soloist, brings R&B; into the picture with some fine piano boogie and organ rides that alternately recall Booker T. Jones and more classically tinged precursors like Procol Harum and Keith Emerson’s old band, the Nice. Wood shines during the long instrumental “Pipeline Sequence,” although less inspired soloing from Stekol and the otherwise impressive drummer, Tris Imboden, rob the heraldic piece of its initial momentum.

The package includes an account of the band’s history--which, on the evidence of this record, deserves to be continued alongside the members’ other ongoing musical projects.

* Honk members Steve Wood and Beth Fitchet are playing each Wednesday night this month at the Old Dana Point Cafe, 24701 Golden Lantern in Dana Point. Information: (714) 661-6003.

* 1/2 Stryper “Can’t Stop the Rock: The Stryper Collection 1984-1991” (Hollywood)

O, ye of too little faith--in rock ‘n’ roll. This collection offers an overview of a band that can rock well when it has a mind to but is prone to flinch and offer sugary substitutes for the real thing.

The real thing emerges on “Can’t Stop the Rock,” one of two new tracks included here. The song is an attempt to persuade fans that Stryper, which pioneered Christian heavy metal, hasn’t deserted its beliefs after “Against the Law,” a 1990 album that was not explicitly religious. “Can’t Stop the Rock” may be an exercise in damage control, intended to reassure the band’s large core of Christian-rock fans, but at least the lead guitar testifies raunchily.

The other new song, “Believe,” is a bombastic pledge of support to the Desert Storm troops that blissfully ignores what soldiers actually face in a battle zone--fear and excruciating uncertainty. Support them, sure, but don’t saddle them with unfair expectations by painting them as cliched fantasy heroes: “Hearts filled with courage, souls filled with fire.”

The collection’s 10 previously released tracks include a few reasonably effective rockers (“Soldiers Under Command,” “To Hell With the Devil,” “Two Bodies (One Mind One Soul)”), and some glitzier pop-rock songs partly redeemed by the band’s way with a musical hook (“Always There for You,” “Lady”). But when Michael Sweet starts singing in a girlish falsetto on “Honestly” and “Together as One,” Stryper sins against rock’s most basic commandments.

“Against the Law” was a step forward for Stryper, and not necessarily because it dropped the Christian content. The album offered a toughened sound and lyrics that finally got beyond the band’s former sloganeering and set up recognizable human situations. If Stryper returns to expressions of faith, that’s fine--so long as it excises the flab and triteness too much in evidence on this retrospective.