Rock today means rap. Radio stations that once exclusively aired the banshee cries of heavy-metal belters now mix in hip-hop, delivered by kids playing hard-rock guitars.

        Like any dominant mode of popular music, rock-rap has a formula that has been repeated exponentially. And, judging by the large, young crowd at Bogart's Tuesday, which enthusiastically cheered on three rock-rap up-and-comers, the genre appears well-entrenched in the mainstream.

        Crazy Town, the headliners named in honor of their native of Los Angeles, had the strongest hip-hop influence of three. The seven-man band was fronted by Shifty Shellshock and Epic Mazur, whose back-and-forth delivery borrowed completely from hip-hop-duo tradition without giving anything back to it. During loud songs like "Hollywood Babylon" they screamed over the guitars and drums, creating a noise that — blame it on the sound man — was physically painful. Quieter hip-hop served them no better, because rhymes about delinquency and general craziness were exposed in all of their full-on dullness.

        In the end, Crazy Town's metier isn't loud rock-rap or traditional hip-hop; it's pop. The finest song was "Butterfly," a hit-single love song as sugary and disposable as any ballads by the late-'80s poodle-metal bands who preceded the rap-rock groups in rock-radio dominance.

        The runner-up was "Revolving Door," a mid-tempo pop song Shifty said would be their next single. After the show they were to fly home to shoot the song's video, he said, and they'd be traveling by private jet for the first time. Rock-rap pays.

        Saliva and Stereomud both emphasized the rock half of rock-rap, playing loud, churning, "funky" rhythms throughout.

        The lyrics of both bands painted a less than sunny world view. If the screaming didn't put the point across for Saliva, titles like "Lackluster" and choruses like "The world is after me" did.

        Stereomud, the openers, may have had the best set by default. A new group featuring former members of Stuck Mojo and Life of Agony, the band did 30 minutes of material from an album set for release April 22 on Columbia Records.

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