Black Rebel Motorcycle Club revs its engines

Almost a year ago, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club played Jannus Landing in support of their critically hailed fourth album, Baby 81. The Cali-based collective of Peter Hayes, Robert Levon Been and Nick Jago was sharing the bill with fellow alt act Kings of Leon. BRMC was up first, and tore through their hourlong set of ferocious, filthy, fuzzed out rock 'n' roll. I was there, and at one point the dumbfounded dude standing next to me leaned over and yelled, "Who the hell are these motherfuckers?" If you're at Ford Amphitheatre Friday night, when BRMC opens for Stone Temple Pilots, get ready for someone to ask you the same thing.

High school chums from the San Francisco suburb of Lafayette, guitarist Hayes and bassist Been joined forces 10 years ago. Theirs was an immediate brotherhood: The guys share duties on piano/organ and vocals. Shortly after they formed, the duo brought in drummer Nick Jago, a British expat. The threesome ditched their original moniker, The Elements, adopting Black Rebel Motorcycle Club from the 1953 Brando film, The Wild One, and released a self-titled debut on Virgin in 2001.

B.R.M.C. set the tone for the band's signature blend of Brit shoegazing and So Cal punk swagger. With its dense reverb, distortion and garage revival aesthetic, the music drew immediate comparisons to The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Velvet Underground, Oasis and the Stooges. It was an auspicious start -- an intoxicating haze of extreme amps, T-Rex bluster and Zeppelin- and old Stones-steeped blues.

But 2003's sophomore effort, Take Them On, On Your Own -- a darker, more aggressive record that introduced fans to the political and religious themes of subsequent work -- was a critical and commercial disappointment. Despite hitting number 3 on the U.K. charts, the album fared poorly in America, and Virgin dropped the act in early 2004. Things only got worse. After struggling with drugs and booze, Jago left the group late that summer.

The split was a pivotal point in BRMC's career. Hayes and Been soon signed with RCA, and emerged from the studio with Howl, a remarkable re-haul of their sound that stripped away the space-rock psychedelia. This was raw Americana, a gothic fusion of soul, gospel, folk and roots, even honky-tonk. The band traded heavy effects and production for acoustic guitars, dialed-down percussion and spare arrangements, exploring an atmosphere and urgency suggested on their first record.

Though just as cinematic as its snarly predecessors, Howl left the citified glam rock for desolate stretches in the middle of nowhere ("Devil's Waitin'" cries, "I've seen the battle/ and I've seen the war/ and the life laying here is the life I've been sold"). In BRMC's bleak, beat poetics, hope is in short supply, salvation nonexistent. The raucous "Ain't No Easy Way," with its simple, slithery harmonica and steel hook, oozes with saloon backroom sex.

One of the most haunting road records of the last decade, the album dominated 2005 Best Of lists, and Jago was along for the ride. He returned toward the end of the Howl sessions, playing on one track and joining the band for its tour and next album, last year's Baby 81. Another acclaimed disc, Baby brought the group full-circle, incorporating the minimalist triumphs of Howl with BRMC's sultry, electrified wall of sound.

Jago's thick, ballsy rhythms were back in the fold. The grinding "666 Conducer" and "Weapon of Choice," with its anthemic "I won't waste my love on a nation" refrain, marked a creative zenith. Of their return to noisy form, Hayes told Playback: "We wanted to take what we learned from Howl and add it to, you know, what we do loud." It also provided the power trio with its fiercest live material yet.

If Friday's show is anything like last fall's smoldering shock-and-awe affair, the crowd won't know what hit it. Hayes and Been saunter about in a spectacle of smoke and black leather, greasy charisma and gritty licks that's riveting in person. The duo is blistering on rousers "Berlin," "Took Out a Loan" and strutting "The Likes of You," an instant classic from the Baby 81 session EP.

The old songs will be there at the STP gig, but the old drummer will not. In a blog post two months ago, Jago announced that he was out of the band. Hayes and Been took to MySpace to clarify his departure. The impetus was "his own solo project," they wrote; Jago hadn't been fired, as he had implied. Leah Shapiro of The Raveonettes took over, but it's not clear Hayes and Been have given up. Jago remains listed in the current lineup online.

Though the trio's future is uncertain, one thing's for sure: Hayes and Been aren't slowing down, even after a decade as co-frontmen. Proof positive: All the Scott Weiland fans tapping their neighbors' shoulders come Friday night, asking who the hell these guys are.