If you want an example of how punk-rock crusties and hard-rock heshers have ceased hostilities, listen to the moment on the Sign*Offs song "Real Side" where the singer trades Johnny Rotten’s sneer for Axl Rose’s in the middle of a verse — without missing a beat. The great thing is how natural it sounds. Tattoo’d teenage punks from Cleveland with one foot in the Dead Boys’ grave and the other on your throat, the Sign*Offs are part of that enviable generation of high-school hellraisers for whom Appetite for Destruction and . . . And Justice for All are classic-rock touchstones. And though they’ve got the bruised-knuckle skate-punk shake appeal you’d expect from a band on Duane "U.S. Bombs" Peters’s label, they can’t help flashing a little metal. "Run" gives the Backyard Babies treatment to an Explosion riff, but you wouldn’t know it from the Scorpions-esque power-ballad tease in the intro. "She’s in the Shower" pulls almost the same trick, borrowing the wrist-slitting coda from Metallica’s ballad "One," a song about an over-introspective quadriplegic, for an Electric Frankenstein–style scorcher about an over-introspective pussy bandit. And it’s a good guess that the liner notes omit most of the lyrics to "Outlet" because some of ’em are from "Fade to Black."

(The Sign*Offs play T.T. the Bear’s Place next Thursday, April 25. Call 617-492-BEAR.)