New Black is on something more dangerous than trucker speed. What that is, I don't know. Maybe they don't have a name for it yet. Maybe it was dreamed up by a chemist whose notes were stolen by the government and used to create a drug that attacks the nervous system in such a way that anyone who takes it will never, ever be able to sleep again. I can tell you this: if you happen to swallow it by mistake, watch your heart rate and get your hands on your grandfather's nitro pills.

Cooked up in some meth lab masquerading as a recording studio, Time Attack is the frantic second album from Patti Gran, Liam Kimball, Nick Kraska and Rachel Shindelman - four people who generate more energy than the Hoover Dam. Their DNA is different from that of your usual dance-punk sleeper cell, altered perhaps in some horrible nuclear accident in a former Soviet republic. A freakishly visceral ball of radioactivity, New Black is a no-wave/new wave animal/robot that burns on a synthetic fuel of female vocal hysteria, arty sensibilities, pulse-racing rhythms, horror-movie organ and edgy, serrated guitars.

No genre jail can hold New Black. Walls quake at the sound of the jackhammer title track and the demolishing distortion of the album intro "Mere Cats," while the cutting guitars of the rolling boil "Khalil!" could saw through iron bars. This album is tense and relentless, and surprisingly well contoured, as evidenced by the curve-hugging burner "Nothing Scares Us" and the fun, flipped-out dance blitz "Big Haus." But nothing compares to the cat-and-mouse menace of "Devil In My Car," with its unsettling male/female vocal interplay and bleak Joy Division-like machinery. Though it's hard to tell from the obscure lyrics, "Devil In My Car" sounds like a cautionary tale of a driver who picks up a hitchhiker and lives - or maybe, dies - to regret it. I guess when it comes to lyrics, psychological thrillers are the New Black.

As a group, New Black is leather-tight. And scary. Less melodic and more straightforward than Q And Not U, and nowhere near as weird as Erase Errata, New Black is always on the offensive, always in your face. Kimball's nasty, post-punk bass grooves and Kraska's driving drums give New Black an engine most bands only dream of, while Gran's guitar is vicious and sharp. Everything is up front; nothing is subtly buried in the background, waiting to jump out. It all leaps at you like a tiger - a Selby Tiger, perhaps. It would help New Black to try to relax its sound a bit. A song like "Der Spook" is so out of control and frantic, its nervous energy is off putting. That said, New Black is great, adrenaline-fueled rock n' roll and everyone else who's trying to reanimate James Chance should step it up.