With its balls-to-the-wall live shows now known around the world, maniacal Israeli three-piece Monotonix has gained some richly deserved notoriety as a band you must see in the flesh. The trio’s on- and offstage antics — crowd surfing complete with drum kit, guzzling beer out of shoes snatched from audience members and sometimes even setting themselves on fire — are as wild and unpredictable as a rabid animal. However, stripped from its visceral visual context, the band’s previous offering, 2008’s Body Language EP, fell a little flat, sounding like a more metallic version of Thin Lizzy with only one-tenth of the hooks.

For the full-length follow-up, Monotonix returned to San Francisco’s fittingly dubbed Louder Studios and the production of Tim Green. Sonically, there have only been minor tweaks made to the band’s squalor, but by adding just a slightly brighter tone to their guitars, a noticeable amount of mud and monotony has been scraped away. In terms of songwriting, the Thin Lizzy comparisons can still be made, but the band has now taken on a few tricks from the Mudhoney and Fu Manchu schools of rock as well, mixing up the onslaught with a grip of strangely refreshing slow jams.

Opener “Flesh and Blood” starts off running, with the album’s first of many super repetitive blues riffs and half-howled, half-grumbled vocals. An increased emphasis on dynamics is also evident almost immediately, as a fiery feedback storm two-thirds of the way through provides the song with a brief intermission from the blitz. “Something Had Dried” and the organ-and-echo-drenched closer “Hunt You Down” are the two previously mentioned slow burners and while they’re far from ballads, both allow singer Ami Shalev a chance to show off his shaggy soulful side until the jams kick back in.

Album standout “Set Me Free” is also surprisingly sparse, building on a primal drum beat with quiet background chatter and a spoken-word delivery. The shorter songs — “My Needs” and “Spit It On Your Face” — bring back the non-stop riffage, while the nearly six-minute “As Noise” starts off somewhat shaky on Shalev’s off-key caterwauls but soon transforms into a monolith that will surely melt minds live.

With a title like Where Were You When It Happened?, Monotonix seem well aware that nothing the band has recorded to date has come close to the excitement of its live show. However, it’s a definite step in the right direction, so let’s all holler and raise the horns for another encore.