SLT is a band that has earned a second chance. It first burst on the scene in 1991 with a raw and menacing stab at classic punk rock. The music was direct, uncompromising, and incendiary, played by musicians that loved it and lived it. There were wild slash 'n' burn shows, there was dope, there was chaos, but there were no lifeboats. It was too much, too soon, and not everyone got out alive. Guitarist Luke Warm died of an overdose in 1995 and the band essentially disintegrated.

But there was unfinished business, unreleased recordings, and unresolved emotions; things that the remaining members of SLT finally started to address in the last couple of years. Founding members Chuck Irving (then bassist, now guitarist), drummer Pat Lowery, and singer Matt Sabo finally released the CD "Dirty Sleep" last year on Jargon Records - the album they had laid down at Arpad's Studio before Warm's death. Soon after, the itch to mount the stage began to fester, and the remaining original members teamed up with guitarist Phil Marshall and bassist Ken Frank (both ex-Colorblind James Experience members) to bring SLT back.

It's been a longer and stranger trip than any Deadhead could possibly imagine, but it has gotten SLT to where it is today. And SLT has never sounded better.

When the band kicked off at the end of the last century, it adhered to the mid-1970's sound exemplified by Detroit groups like The MC-5 and The Stooges, and New York's The Heartbreakers - loud and snotty stuff that was just a few clicks shy of r&b and self-destruction. It was a particularly volatile and reactionary time in music, with the press speculating and insinuating and generally missing the point. Creem magazine was one of the few rags that got it right, and SLT's name is a tip of the hat to one of its main writers, the prolific and eccentric music critic Lester Bangs.

"It means ‘Show Lester's Time,'" Lowery says. "We were sitting around thinking about who would be our audience, somebody that would dig us. And we thought Lester Bangs."

"We kicked around a couple of names," Irving says. "And nobody could agree on anything. We were talking about Creem magazine and Thing [singer for The Fertility Rite Brothers and local scenester] said, ‘This band shows Lester's time.'"

SLT hit the scene hard. It was provocative. It was reckless. It was street-tough and street-wise, but it also had a tragic, lyrical beauty within the rapidly consuming lifestyle it projected. SLT lived and played this way. It threatened to destroy the band. And if you don't take into account the band's recent rebirth, it did.

"It was just a disastrous dissent into hell," Lowery says. "The final stages of it, anyway. I was suffering from hepatitis C, injecting interferon, and collapsing at rehearsals. It was just so nuts, that's all I'm gonna say. Anyone who wants a tragic story can look in the mirror."

"The rumors everybody heard," says Irving. "Are all of them true? No. Some of them true? Yeah, maybe."

"It's worse than their imaginations," says Lowery, who in 2003 split for Texas. But before his exit, he had the wherewithal to take the master tapes for the album - in limbo for nearly a decade - to Dave Anderson at Saxon Recording on East Main Street for safekeeping.

Then things went quiet. There was no communication between the remaining members for several years. Lowery wasn't playing at all.

"I was denying myself the joy of music," he says.

"Irish Catholic guilt," Irving says.

"I'm sure it was guilt," says Lowery. "Over things that aren't really a part of music - because that's such a beautiful medium - but the things that were happening in between, personal relationships, Luke's death... I never really handled it. I mean, handling it in a mature, emotional, grieving, healthy way...going through the steps."

In 2007, Lowery returned to Rochester, ready to write SLT's remaining chapters - or at least get started on the next one.

"That was the beginning of the whole healing process," he says. "It doesn't matter when you do it as long as you do it. I knew we could heal the past, make it right. For me, when I wrote the song ‘Dirty Sleep' [the lone new track on the album], I knew it would be a song that would move us into the future, something to present and say, ‘Look, we're alive."'

"We knew we had this pretty intense body of work that no one else knew about," Irving says, referring to the original album's master tapes. "And we kind of had this open wound, and we thought this would be a good way spiritually, artistically to finally fucking get some closure - or at least face it."

Irving continues: "I'll tell you what we didn't want. We didn't want this to be some kind of contrived bullshit, we wanted to celebrate the art, the spirit of it. We didn't want it to be this thing that happens in America where you put it in gold shoes and it gets sapped-out, ‘Oh, this is about Luke...'"

"Yeah," says Lowery. "'Another junkie has come back to life...' Fuck that."

So the band went into the studio to mix the old recordings and record the new track. The session wasn't without its obstacles. Irving had to record both guitar and bass parts, they hadn't officially invited Sabo back into the project yet, and Lowery was out of practice and in pain.

"Pat hadn't played drums in five years," says Irving. "And he'd just had ass surgery."

SLT prevailed, and "Dirty Sleep" finally emerged, sounding big and bad and happy and sad and mucho, mucho cool.

"So we put it out and, boom! The future is now," says Lowery.

 On the album, Lowery's drums are a mix of apocalyptic thunder and a barroom brawl, the guitars (both Warm's and Irving's) are ragged and sexy, and Sabo's voice slithers in ominous seduction. He has one of those ultimate rock 'n' roll voices.

"Matt's the coolest guy in the room," Lowery says. "There's something about him, his heart is so big. He can steal your grandmother's wedding ring, call her up the next day to apologize, and she'll take him out to dinner. He can pull that kind of shit off."

In order to play live, the band asked veteran bassist Ken Frank to fill in. But Frank wasn't having it; he wanted to be in the band. Not too long after, Frank brought in Rochester six-string wizard Phil Marshall. Marshall wanted in as well. Most bands in SLT's position have to beg cats to fill in, and settle with whatever they can get. Yet people were volunteering to be in SLT. Lowery was knocked out.

"It's us," he says. "Are you kidding me?"

"Yeah," says Irving. "Two of the most scabberous, scurrilous, disgusting, sniggering junkie motherfuckers in rock 'n' roll around here, and Phil Marshall wants to join?"

SLT is in the studio now banging out a new record due in the summer. The preliminary tracks are powerful, referential, and reverent, as if they were classic cuts from an era that showed Lester's time. That's because it's in the musicians' blood; they've lived it. Some have died living it. Regardless, and according to Lowery, SLT doesn't try, it just is.

"Tryin' is denyin,'" he says.

SLT

w/Phukettes and Peitzsche Neitzsches

Saturday, March 13

Monty's Krown Lounge, 875 Monroe Ave.

9:30 p.m. | $3 | 271-7050