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The Transplants' second album, Haunted Cities, sounds like a mash-up of 20 bands playing 20 styles of music. It's all here, from R&B to punk and reggae to power-pop. The band features members of Rancid and Blink-182 and the CD includes guest appearances by members of Cypress Hill and the Boo-Yaa Tribe, so it's no surprise Haunted Cities is a Frankenstein's monster of an album.

In fact, Transplants vocalist Rob Aston confirms that he, Rancid's Tim Armstrong and Blink-182's Travis Barker conceived the band with such musical chaos in mind. "We just go in the studio and make music; we don't care if it's one type of music or another," Aston says in such a fast, flat rhythm that it's easy to miss three or four words in a row. "We fuck with everything: hip-hop, hardcore, punk rock, jazz, rock steady, drum 'n' bass. We do that shit, no problem."

In 1999, Aston was working as a roadie and soundman for Rancid and AFI. He and Armstrong began hanging out after he moved into the singer-guitarist's Los Angeles neighborhood. Armstrong asked him to write a rap for a hip-hop track he was working on, even though Aston had absolutely no experience with songwriting or, for that matter, playing in a band.

"He saw something in me because he knew I was different," Aston explains. "I had something to say. He knew I wasn't gonna come in with some bullshit and waste everybody's time."

Although Armstrong took to his writing immediately, Aston had a slightly different opinion of his first lyric-writing effort. "He said, 'You'll come to the studio, and we'll do it,' " Aston remembers. "I went home, wrote 16 bars or something and just did it. I thought it sucked. It was my first time. I was nervous as shit, but he thought it was cool, and we just kept working."

Armstrong served as something of a coach and mentor for the new writer and vocalist. "He would make suggestions," Aston recalls. "Tim helps everybody. Everyone's idea is included, and no one thinks they're better than anyone else in the band. But he would say, 'Sing it harder, maybe a little deeper.' He always gave good suggestions."

The two began working together in Armstrong's home studio. They had recorded most of the album before bringing in Barker on drums, and the Transplants released their self-titled debut in the fall of 2002. The album drew little response from Rancid or Blink fans, and the punk community went crazy when the band allowed a song to be used in a shampoo commercial. But hip-hop fans loved the record, and Snoop Dogg invited the band on his MTV show Doggyfizzle Televizzle.

Aston is stereotypically unconcerned with the criticism the Transplants receive from people who accuse the band of selling out and betraying its punk roots. "We do whatever the fuck we want," he argues. "If we have a feeling that day, we make whatever kind of record we feel like. We don't have no agenda, no list of shit we feel we need to do. We just take it day by day. Whatever happens, happens. It's natural. There are gonna be fans of Travis and Tim who follow them whatever they do, and that's cool. We got room for everybody. We don't give a fuck."

The band has toured briefly, but all its members have had extensive commitments to other projects, including, of course, Rancid and Blink-182. Barker has an MTV reality show, Meet the Barkers. Armstrong does production work with Pink and others. And Aston recorded his first solo album for Warner Bros., but the label never released it.

After his first go-round in the music-industry centrifuge, Aston is less than impressed. "The music industry fucking sucks," he says. "There are so many scumbags, backstabbing motherfuckers and all that. It ain't really too different from the street, because everyone's got their own agenda and their own reasons for doing shit with you. There are a lot of motherfuckers who will take money out of your pocket just like that. I've been fortunate enough to work for bands for years before I started this. So I got a firsthand look at the good and the bad that comes from the choices people make. And I try and learn from my friends' mistakes and their good choices."

Aston doesn't mind at least one aspect of the music industry: the media. Armstrong is notoriously media-wary, having gone five years without speaking to the press until this year. So when the Transplants released their first CD, Aston became the band's public face. It suited him just fine.

"It don't matter to me at all," he says. "I don't mind doing it. If people wanna take the time to hear what I gotta say, for sure. I'm not uncomfortable with it whatsoever. There ain't too many people I had to deal with who asked questions that were inappropriate. It was cool."

Haunted Cities, released on La Salle/Atlantic, is the first rock album to have been chopped and screwed, a technique developed within the Houston hip-hop scene in which vocals are slowed to a drawl. Houston rapper Paul Wall produced the chopped-and-screwed version of the CD, which will be out later this summer.

"He gets us and we get him, so it made sense," Aston explains of Wall. "We got a record he could do that to. Ain't nobody made a record like our shit before. He can't just chop and screw any fucking record, because he's good at that shit. That's history. Nobody's done that with a record like ours, just hip-hop and R&B."

It's an interesting direction for a band whose members clearly have roots in punk rock. All in all, Aston believes the Transplants fit as comfortably into the punk scene as they do into any other. But if anyone believes otherwise, well, that's their problem.

"To me, punk was always doing what you want, how you wanted to do it, by your rules," Aston says. "And that's exactly what we do. We don't give a fuck about what anyone else thinks about us. We do it because we like it. To me, that's punk rock. But what do I know?"

The Transplants will perform Saturday at the Warped Tour. See details.