In a scene increasingly littered with mallpunk junk, California's 1208 is a rock & roll life raft. Pumping out music with an edge and an intensity sorely lacking in the genre these days, this South Bay-reared quartet effortlessly teeters between melody and mayhem on its exhilarating second album, Turn Of The Screw. 1208, formed in 1995 and named for the apartment number the group first shared, plays punk like it's the only thing that matters in the world. Just check the apropos anthem "Next Big Thing," which scoffs at the corporate-merger music world's sinister, 'sign 'em and drop 'em' ways; "Time To Remember," where power pop and punk fuse with blissful results; or the irate authority-damning charge of "Smash the Badge."