LOCO-MOTION : Lash Out or Go Insane Is Sometimes the Meaning of Suicidal Tendencies

According to Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living.

Suicidal Tendencies has its own corollary to that rule: Leading the examined life means plunging into a deep, dark vat of internal pain.

On some songs, front man Mike Muir’s inner probes become lost expeditions into confusion.

“It’s just that I don’t know who I am. . . . It hurts so much,” he wails in “Emotion No. 13,” from the Venice-based punk-metal band’s most recent album, “Lights, Camera, Revolution.”

Sometimes, Muir comes to a degree of understanding about himself, on songs like “The Feeling’s Back,” which brought a final note of affirmation to the Suicidals’ otherwise baleful 1988 album, “How Will I Laugh Tomorrow . . . When I Can’t Even Smile Today.”

And sometimes, the band suggests, internal and external pressures leave no alternative but to lash out or go insane. Fear of madness lurks in many a Suicidal song. But there also is a sense that going loco is a source of release, and even pride.

“If you like magic, here’s a trick / Snap my fingers, I’m a lunatic,” Muir sings, with swagger, on “Go ‘N Breakdown,” one of the band’s celebrations of the berserk.

Songs like that, and a name like Suicidal Tendencies, make Muir and company ready targets for those who want to paint metal as a threat to Young America’s mental health.

Muir addresses that criticism in “You Can’t Bring Me Down,” taking the line that it is healthier to look at dark realities than to pretend they aren’t there: “If I offended you, I’m sorry, but maybe you need to be offended.”

In other words, maybe Young America’s mental health isn’t pristine to begin with, and listening (or, as many fans choose to do, careening madly in a slam-pit) to Suicidal Tendencies is a healthier outlet than some of the alternatives.

The band emerged in 1983, with “Institutionalized,” a grinding, ranting punk number that became a huge underground hit (it even surfaced aboveground, as soundtrack music for “Repo Man” and a “Miami Vice” episode). In its early days, ST became tagged as a magnet--Muir has said unwillingly--for gang mayhem at concerts. Consequently, the band found itself unable to get bookings in Southern California for several years. That ban ended a year ago at UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center, in a sold-out concert that was free of violence, if you don’t count the impact of moshers banging into each other.

After its debut, Suicidal Tendencies released nothing until 1987, when founding member Muir returned with a revamped lineup and a sound that bridged punk rock and speed-metal styles. Today’s ST, with Muir, guitarists Rocky George and Mike Clark, drummer R.J. Herrera and bassist Robert Trujillo, has begun getting some mainstream attention by bringing uncommon flexibility and melodic awareness to the metal mode without sacrificing explosive force.

Who: Suicidal Tendencies.

When: Thursday, Aug. 15, at 8 p.m. With Armored Saint.

Where: Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: San Diego Freeway to Irvine Center Drive exit. Turn left at the end of the ramp if you’re coming from the south, right if you’re coming from the north.

Wherewithal: $20.75, $22.75, $24.75.

Where to call: (714) 740-2000.