PRIMAL SCREAM is back.

The band that released the pivotal U.K. album of the '90s (Screamadelica) and outraged and amused generations of fans with their drug-fueled antics and impassioned love for music has returned. The Scottish dance/rock crossover combo's new album, Xtrmntr, writhes and wallows like an electronic 21st-century version of George Clinton's funk-driven early-'70s outfits.

And guess what? Frontman Bobby Gillespie -- the man who once convinced me to pay 30 Australian dollars for an import copy of the Faces' Ooh La La through sheer passion alone -- is on the phone, ranting.

"Why do I make music? Because I fucking love making it," Gillespie explains simply. "It's the greatest feeling. As I get older, I get better as a songwriter, and I've also got a motherfucking great outlet -- like Parliament or Funkadelic. It keeps me alive."

Xtrmntr is an excellent, adrenaline-fueled, high-energy dance album. It throws in full-on political imagery ("Swastika Eyes" and the no-nonsense opening track, "Kill All Hippies") with vicious, vitriolic dance beats ("Accelerator" sounds like German post-Riot Grrl apocalyptic noise terrorists Atari Teenage Riot). It slows down and swoons momentarily with a few tracks ("Keep Your Dreams," "Five Years Ahead of My Time"), which owe plenty to Primal Scream's first and second incarnations. And then it races on full-speed into "Pills," which features Gillespie rapping and sounding like he wishes he were in the Wu-Tang Clan.

"'Swastika Eyes' is a good, powerful, authoritarian image for a song," explains the Glaswegian singer. "It's about the American multinational corporations, dropping bombs, being able to commit mass murder anywhere they like in the world. It's white fascism, getting out of control. No one is able to stop it. I guess that's what the song's about. It's punk, but we made it disco as well, so it was quite jolly and people could dance to it."

Many critics have marked Primal Scream down in the past as being all mouth, no trousers. "If Gillespie could write music as well as he could talk it," they say, "Primal Scream would be the greatest rock 'n' roll band in existence." One listen to Gillespie enthusing about music, and you begin to understand why.

"The influences on the new album are Joy Division, late-'60s/early-'70s period James Brown, and Miles Davis from the same time," he begins, before going on to mention another two dozen bands, including 13th Floor Elevators' mentally deranged Roky Erikson, Moby Grape's mellow and disturbed Alexander Skip Spence, Screaming Trees' poetic Mark Lanegan, and Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5.

"That was a lot of the shit we were listening to over the last few years," he explains. "I watched that Clash film the other day -- I was almost in tears, that band was so beautiful and had so much love in their music. Music today seems so loveless and so conservative. Thatcher's children have taken over. I'm not negative, and there are some great bands out there, but they're few and far between."

Inspired by the noise experimentation of Can, Suicide, and Public Image Limited, the youthful Gillespie battered out rhythms on dustbin lids in a Glasgow bedroom in the early '80s. Not long after, he became a member of the seminal line-up of Jesus and Mary Chain, but only briefly. Then came Primal Scream. Their early Creation albums switched between jangling, Byrds-esque pop and full-on MC5 raw power rock. 1991's acid-house-influenced Screamadelica, however, opened the floodgates. The controversial follow-up, Give out, but Don't Give Up, embraced the funk of early-'70s Rolling Stones, and failed to convince critics who wanted another epoch-defining album. But 1997's scuzzy, much-underrated Vanishing Point defied the criticism like a rabid beast defies capture. It looked back to the era of militant funksters like James Brown and Fela Kuti, appropriating their improvised funk patterns wholesale.

And now Primal Scream is back, funkier and angrier than ever.

"I've always been quite politically aware," Gillespie states, "but the more I see the way [Scotland] is going, the angrier I become. It's swung so far to the right there's no opposition left at all. There's no room for debate; Thatcher smashed all of that out of Britain in the '80s. And it's happening all over the world: America, Australia -- multinational fucking madness. It's become such a death culture. I've seen so many people destroy themselves. The amount of heroin up here in Glasgow is terrible. I really believe it's population control on the government's part. Ecstasy was a communal drug which brought people together during the house-music days, while heroin draws people apart. So all of a sudden, that's the cheap drug. It's now £20 a bag where it used to be £100.

"It's a real fucked-up situation," the singer continues. "The heavy drug use is tolerated because it's used to control the population. That's what happened in America in the '60s with the Black Panthers, and in both Brixton and Liverpool after the riots. Suddenly, the places were awash with the stuff. I get angrier as I become more and more aware. The whole thing with NATO bombing the shit out of Yugoslavia -- that was insane; Tony Blair on British TV, high on bloodlust. They didn't touch the Yugoslavian army; instead they bombed girls, bridges, motorways, city centers.... And the middle-class papers here like The Guardian were full of bloodlust and love for war."

No point interrupting Gillespie now; he's on a rant.

"So afterwards, the World Bank, IMF -- which is basically America -- will loan Serbia millions of dollars with which to rebuild their country, and all the contracts will go to America, Germany, France, Britain... and of course they won't be able to keep up with even the interest rates on the repayments, so they'll be in debt to us forever. They'll build a Coke factory, an arms factory... that's what the world is about nowadays, finding a new place to build aircraft carriers for the States. The '80s and '90s were times of mass depoliticalization for the kids in Britain, so many nowadays don't have any views at all. It's total mind-control, man."

Gillespie takes a breath.

"Let's get back to the music...."

No problem, Bobby. Only too happy.

Xtrmntr is seriously lively, an unashamed sexual come-on, a flying fist in the face of conservative conformity and apolitical late-20th-century apathy. The beats blister paint where they fall. PRIMAL SCREAM IS BACK! And they have plenty of friends and collaborators on hand to help them fuck shit up... names that read like a who's who of the last two decades of British independent dance/rock:

The Chemical Brothers. These dance gurus are responsible for a full-on techno mix of "Swastika Eyes." Gillespie had guested on vocals on "Out of Control," on the Brothers' recent psychedelic dance album, and it seemed only fair to return the favor.

Kevin Shields, from classic late-'80s British noise-pop band My Bloody Valentine. Shields threads a high-octane guitar solo through the center of the single "If They Move... Kill Them," an excellent, mystical piece of noodling nonsense.

David Holmes, the dance world's own John Barry. Holmes extends the beat in the relentless, film-soundtrack-y "Blood Money" even further to his own warped visions. (Gillespie says, "We asked David in because that track sounded a bit like Public Image, and we know he loves that kind of shit.")

Dr. Octagon (a.k.a. the Automator). Primal Scream has collaborated with this deranged rap doctor before, on the excellent, nihilistic "Kowalski."

Bernard Sumner, guitarist with Joy Division and New Order. Sumner adds an excellent, "Unknown Pleasures"-style guitar solo to the final track, the Kraut-rocky "Shoot, Speed, Kill Light." (Gillespie says, "We asked Bernard in because we felt he was the only guy who could play that sound.")

Primal Scream has had an enormous effect on contemporary British music, even if Gillespie doesn't want to acknowledge the fact.

"I'm not that enamored of much contemporary music," Gillespie explains. "I love Royal Trux's Accelerator -- that's fantastic rock 'n' roll. My favorite record this year is I See a Darkness by Bonnie Prince Billy [Palace Brothers' Will Oldham]; it's just so emotional. I just got the new Make Up album today, and I love that. Besides that, I don't hear anything new that I like. I can't say much about us being an influence, maybe on Death in Vegas and the Chemical Brothers; I don't know. It's not for me to say. Maybe not in terms of copying our music, but in widening people's listening tastes. A lot of barriers have been broached in the past decade -- a lot of record shops here now have reggae, funk, alternative, electronic sections. It's more mixed and open to different styles than when we were young."

When was the last time rock music was exciting?

"For me?" Gillespie asks. "The Jesus and Mary Chain. I know it sounds obvious, but they were one of the last great rock 'n' roll bands. Nirvana, too. I loved Kurt Cobain. I had a lot of interest in that guy. I think rock 'n' roll has disappeared from the world since he died, the same way that jazz disappeared from the world when Miles Davis and John Coltrane died, and when all those guys died who were responsible for that awesome Anthology of American Folk Music which appeared a couple of years ago. Maybe you can still go and see Motörhead and get a dose of high-energy rock... but there's no rock 'n' roll left. Maybe it has to mutate. I think we're a pretty good rock 'n' roll band."

What excites you right now?

"I've been so immersed in my record, I can't answer...." Bobby pauses, searching his memory for a name to champion. "I listen to the old stuff, not because I'm old but because there's a whole attitude missing nowadays. People in bands now are so un-opinionated. Who isn't? Mogwai. They're a good band with a great attitude. They're cool. Music is so conservative nowadays, man. It's fucking bad."

Bobby pauses, and you can almost hear him looking at his watch. The interview has already run for more than double the allocated time.

"Is that it?" he asks. "Because I have to run 'round to a friend's to return some records."