Furious Fire From Frantic D Generation

Sometimes tough luck can be a blessing. Two years ago, New York subway-punks D Generation released a debut album of snarly, caustic rock on EMI, but just as the band was getting some notoriety it was dropped by the label. The rejection was just one more hard knock to fuel its furious fire.

Now with a new album, “No Lunch,” on Columbia, D Generation hit the stage at the Opium Den on Tuesday like a gang of terminally misunderstood bad boys. “Turn the lights up,” begged lead singer Jesse Malin. “We need to see how awful we look.”

Wrapped in an old raincoat despite the Den’s steam heat and sporting messy smears of eyeliner, Malin faced more battles, and it wasn’t just dim lighting. The sound system was as dysfunctional as the hotel-lobby squatters who populate his songs, though it was partially Malin’s fault: He kept whacking himself in the face with his microphone and popping it into his mouth.

The band--all studs, shags and Crazy Glue hair-gel--is a five-headed Tasmanian devil of self-denigration and raunch determined to relive the glory days of punk, power-pop and metal. The sound isn’t new, and it lacks some of the immediate danger of punk’s infancy, but D Generation has several solid, well-crafted songs, and its honest-feeling urgency is direct and undeniably potent.