This record smokes.

A giant step forward from the band's wall-of-sound EP released last year, Dead Confederate's Wrecking Ball is the album that finally makes good on all the brokenhearted promises grunge failed to fulfill 15 years ago.

This is a collection of songs both heavy and heartfelt, burnished with a brush dipped in the wells of psychedelia, songcraft and Sonic Youth. It's the product of a band no longer looking for the sound that fits its talents, but comfortable with exploring the aural landscape it has claimed.

Although the band often cites Neil Young, Nirvana and Pink Floyd (and the influence of those acts is evident), there is clearly much more going on in these 10 tunes. The songs, built on a base of anxiety and angry energy, roll with a mad momentum.

In the very finest rock tradition, the band seems just capable of controlling, of harnessing, these songs. The impression is that although there is a sense of structure and an intentionality to the arrangements, the real force at work is emotion, a far more volatile element.

Heavy Petting opens the album with naked, distorted guitar hammering through deceptively simple power chords and the anguished, smoke-soaked voice of singer Hardy Morris. It is rock stripped to barest essentials -- volume and truth. It serves as an unofficial credo for all that follows, from the ranting Rat to the dynamic Goner to the epic (and ever-so-slightly Southern rock) 12-minute Flesh Colored Canvas .

Each song leaves space for sonic experimentation, whether the vague Radiohead vibe of Yer Circus or the stripped simplicity of the album's final track, Wrecking Ball .

Dead Confederate, as it operates today, seems to understand not only its place in the world emotionally and musically, but also why having an act willing to inhabit that sometimes-uncomfortably honest position is important.

This album is not produced to spawn radio-ready hits. This is an old-fashioned rock record, meant to be listened to, dissected and enjoyed.

It is, quite simply, art.