SUMMER ALBUM ROUNDUP : *** SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, “Suicidal for Life”; <i> Epic</i>

Suicidal Tendencies may be the great forgotten band of the “alternative” revolution, the riff- heavy indie-punk crossover success that these days is supposed to have started with Nirvana.

This one may be less ambitious than their last three albums, one of which was a call to youth revolution, the next displaying an almost Lennon-esque naked emotional vulnerability, the last an almost note-for-note reworking of the band’s decade-old indie-label debut.

Suicidal has always possessed a lot of the same virtues critics adore in U2 and Pearl Jam but find insufferable in what they see as a skate-metal band. It’s probably something very like a class thing--nobody wants to hear about dysfunctional parenting from a singer who, like Suicidal’s Mike Muir, comes off as a hardened worst-case scenario.

But “Suicidal for Life” is, one suspects, more what Suicidal’s new, less-marginalized audience expects from the band: full-on, sort of relentless, just close enough to generic speed metal to snare the Pantera-heads yet blown out of punk-rock fury. It’s also seriously anthemic, though the shout-along choruses tend to be a tad more, um, simplistic than one might prefer. Still, if you have an ounce of aggression in your soul, this might be the--Saturday night car tape of your dreams.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).