THE CRAMPS Stay Sick (Enigma Records)

At a time when artists such as Phil Collins, Midnight Oil and even Janet Jackson are taking on the honorable task of educating the masses about the innumerable injustices in our society, comes a blast of unadulterated dementia and schoolboy humor from the deepest bowels of the rock 'n' roll underworld.

Stay Sick, The Cramps' first release in nearly five years, purges the band of its pent up fascination for decadence and strange fetishes. The self-proclaimed purveyors of bad music for bad people seem to be trapped somewhere between a Z-grade sci-fi thriller and the most perverse sections of 42nd Street in New York. A glance at the disc's song titles reveals a listing that reads more like TV Guide's late-night cable roster. "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns," "The Creture from the Black Leather Lagoon" and "All Women are Band" deliver every bit of cheesiness that characterizes the B-movie genre.

Carried by the psychobilly or surf beats that The Cramps have come to define, the 13-song disc (or 12-song cassette) delves into the distorted psyche of the band. Lead singer Lux Interior hiccups, pants and groans like some possessed Elvis, while spewing lines like, "I dig that God damn rock 'n' roll/The kinda stuff that don't save souls."

Interior's ever inquisitive yet perverse mind continues to explore the mystifying inner workings of the opposite sex.

His twisted bathroom humor is not always immediately clear, but songs like "Daisys Up Your Butterfly," "Mama Oo Pow Pow" and "Saddle Up a Buzz Buzz" convey enough sexual innuendoes and camp to make Benny Hill happy.

Even the classic songs receive fuzzed out, garage treatment from The Cramps. The standard folk tune "Shortnin' Bread" gets the revved up, heebie-geebie deconstruction similar to the band's furious rendition of "Surfin' Bird" from Off the Bone."Muleskinner Blues," however, has to be Interiors pinnacle performance.

All lyrical sickness aside, the album's music is reminiscent of the simpler garage rock that flourished in the late '60s. The melodies are familiar and conjure up aural images of the Beach Boys' surf songs or Carl Perkins' rockabilly, but the low-tech attitude and single string solos are similar to the grunge of The Troggs' "Wild Things."

The Cramps has always been a band dedicated to the preservation of a twisted world and in the midst of rock 'n' roll's maturation, it provides a much needed dose of juvenile silliness. Stay Sick is a veritable cesspool of fun.