It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon in midtown Manhattan — a week before the World Trade Center catastrophe — and Reveille frontman Drew Simollardes is admiring the view of Rockefeller Center from his 16th-floor perch. The central-Massachusetts rap-metal band are about to release their sophomore disc, Bleed the Sky (Elektra), and Simollardes and drummer Justin Wilson have been holed up inside the cavernous AOL Time Warner building doing interviews all day.

" I’m still not used to being in the city, " admits the spiky-haired 20-year-old singer, gazing at the bustling workday crowd below. His lingering awe shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to fans of Reveille. After all, the band members grew up together in the tiny town of Harvard (not the Cambridge university, as they’re no doubt tired of explaining) and were just teenagers when they released their debut disc, Laced (Elektra), in ’99. That album yielded the minor radio hit " Permanent (Take a Look Around) " and helped the group secure a coveted spot on OzzFest 2000. Unlike most bands, they never had to bother moving to the city — rock and roll yanked them right off the apple orchard and took them around the country.

Rural innocence aside, you wouldn’t call these guys sheltered — not after spending an entire summer on the road with the traveling circus known as OzzFest. " We witnessed a lot of crazy shit, " says Simollardes. " A kid on OzzFest who was crew for one of the bands got paid a shitload of money to eat a piece of dog shit. He wasn’t allowed to start swallowing for 30 seconds. He just sat there chewing the shit. " Simollardes is still visibly impressed. " That’s the crazy stuff, " adds Wilson. " The lesbian stories, all that stuff, that’s commonplace. When you see a guy put dog shit in his mouth and swallow it, you remember that. "

That’s the atmosphere that inspired Bleed the Sky, which retains the band’s serious Rage Against the Machine influence but also pushes in both heavier and more melodic directions. The title track is evidence of their newfound ambition: it starts off with Simollardes whispering over a soft but sinister guitar part, then gradually gets louder and shifts into mosh tempo. It’s a new-jack take on the classic metal epic, and there’s not even any rapping till the end.

But the disc’s first single is the straight-up crowd pleaser " What You Got, " a bouncy fight song with a chorus that’s tailor-made for the NFL Films highlight reel: " That’s the penalty/Payback’s a bitch so you best keep running/That’s the penalty/It’s what you got coming. " Obviously, the band aren’t trying to be profound. " To me, that song really captures the energy of us playing live, " says Wilson. " Drew has things to say and musically we’re very dedicated, but at the heart of Reveille, we go off. We get crazy. " " It was the last song we did, " adds Simollardes. " I was sitting out on the balcony drinking one night and just wrote it in about two hours. I was like, ‘You know what? I’ve said everything I need to say. I’m just going to write a pit song.’ It’s not about anything other than kicking people’s asses. "

More than any other song on the disc, " What You Got " bears the imprint of hit producer Howard Benson (P.O.D.), who teamed up with Reveille after producing the latest disc by their Boston-based buddies in Nullset. According to Simollardes, the album’s caustic vibe mirrors what went down in the studio. " Howard’s the type of guy who comes in and tells you that you fuckin’ suck. He makes you so goddamn mad at him. He’ll throw stuff around the room, he’ll scream at you, you’ll scream back. And then all of a sudden, all the songs are done being recorded and he’s sitting there going, ‘Wow, this one came out great.’ Just a different person. It’s all part of his scheme. He makes you hate him, gets the performance out of you, and then it’s all good. "

The headbangingest song on the disc is " Plastic, " which features a brooding vocal turn from Stephen Richards of Taproot and some choice screaming from Simollardes. The chorus — " It’s all plastic/So you can go fuck yourself " — is the singer’s personal memo to groupies everywhere. " I just think they’re annoying, " he says. " Some bands love to fuck a new girl every night, but it’s not my thing. You see them night after night and they come up and say the same thing: ‘I’m not usually like this.’ It’s such bullshit. It gets to the point where you’re just like, ‘Get the fuck away from me.’  "

Simollardes claims the rest of his bandmates feel the same way about groupies, but they’re not averse to all forms of heavy-metal debauchery. Fast-forward past the end of the final track on the album and you’ll hear a question: " Do you like drunken white-boy wanna-be rappers? " A liquored-up hip-hop freestyle track follows featuring guest appearances from two other long-running local rap-metal groups, Nullset and 7th Rail Crew. " We had just gotten home from recording the album in LA, " explains Wilson. " It was like, ‘Let’s have a party with our good friends, get wasted, and see if we can produce a secret track that’s funny.’ " " I wish we could put a bigger disclaimer on it, " says Simollardes ruefully. " It’s supposed to be a piece-of-shit song. "

Rap metal has been repeatedly castigated as a cheap commercial cash-in with no artistic value ever since Limp Bizkit blew up more than two years ago. Simollardes, who says he listened exclusively to old-school hip-hop before discovering rock in high school, shrugs off that kind of blanket criticism. " Rap metal is my favorite type of music. I love rap, I love beats and the way people flow when they rap. But metal has something to it. A rap concert is nothing like a rock concert. Rock concerts are so much more intense. Putting the two together for me is the best of both worlds. I feel like a lot of bands are starting to drift a little bit more into the singy rock type of feel, and it seems like we kind of pulled back the other way. "

In the last year, rock radio has indeed turned its ears back to softer, more melodic fare (Staind, Linkin Park) — so much so that rap metal now seems in danger of being relegated to the sidelines. Happy-rap chorus on " What You Got " aside, Reveille don’t plan on ditching the screaming vocals and the big metal guitar riffs that dominate Bleed the Sky anytime soon. " I feel we offer a solid alternative to all the bands that are drifting in a more pop direction, " says Wilson. " I listen to the Linkin Park record and there’s songs that I like, but I’m always just like, ‘Ugh, what I wish they could do.’ I feel like there are a lot of kids out there that are disappointed who can turn to a band like Reveille. "

Reveille will appear with the Sheila Divine and Throe in an FNX show this Saturday, September 22, at 6:30 p.m. (doors open at 6) at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, 243 Westminster Street in Providence. Admission is free, but donations for the New York City firefighters will be accepted at the door. For more information, call (781) 595-6200.

When this summer’s long-awaited storm of mersh-metal blockbusters finally hit stores around Labor Day weekend, Powerman 5000 were conspicuously absent from the new-release racks. The one-time Boston band were supposed to drop Anyone for Doomsday? — their third DreamWorks disc and the follow-up to their platinum ’99 release, Tonight the Stars Revolt! — on August 28. Tickets for their headlining fall club tour went on sale in early August, and rock radio had already started playing the album’s first single, " Bombshell. " But just two weeks before the release date, the band announced they were heading back into the studio to record new songs for the album. The tour was cancelled, and the album release has been postponed indefinitely.

" I’ve learned that I’m the kind of artist who doesn’t work well on deadline, " said frontman Spider One in an official statement that accompanied the announcement. " As we were nearing completion on the album in the studio, I was continuing to write songs that I felt belonged on Anyone for Doomsday? At that point, we should’ve put the brakes on the project, taking the proper time to finish these new songs and record them. But because the album was scheduled for release in connection with our fall tour, we felt pressure to deliver Doomsday? on deadline — all of which was causing the band and I great agony. So in the interest of releasing a work that we feel is truly representative of Powerman 5000, we’ve delayed the release of Doomsday? "

Funny thing is, the last-second nature of the announcement prevented the major rock publications from killing their reviews of the disc. And it turns out they agree with Spider — the album needs a lot more work. Spin’s 5-out-of-10 review was friendly enough, but sometime new-metal sympathizer Barry Walters gave it one and a half stars in Rolling Stone, ending with a complaint about the disc’s scant 34-minute running time that surely registered with Powerman fans: " Drugs are cheaper and last longer. "

I wouldn’t go that far: Spider’s high-concept cybermusings and erstwhile disco beats are as entertaining as ever, and new guitarist M.33 brings a welcome dose of punk-metal sleaze to songs like " Tomorrow Is Yesterday " and " What the World Does. " The aborted album is obnoxiously high on filler and has a bit of a half-finished feel to it. But it’s hardly disastrous enough to justify Spider’s panic. In other words, he’d better have something really hot up his sleeve.