When Shiver kicks off "Last Rides of the Midway" with an angry punk-rock broadside targeting an "empire of darkness ... fueled by greed," taking its leaders to task for "media parading" and "lying to get what you want," it doesn't take a degree in political science or an Anti-Flag decoder ring to figure out where these guys stand politically.

		Shiver With: Tommy Gutless, Unarmed, the Balcony Boys. Where: Mr. Roboto Project. When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Admission: $5.

But as drummer Benj Auman is quick to note, most of the album's political content is more personal than that, addressing "how you live your life; standing up for your own beliefs; thinking for yourself instead of letting other people think for you. It seems as though people don't think for themselves anymore, and don't have to. That's something that I think is pretty scary and it's something we explore quite a bit in our lyrics, just believing in yourself, thinking for yourself, trusting yourself."

In the second song, "Too Far To Die," they look around and see "a million faces going nowhere in a perfect world," but the Shiver world view is better summed up by a different lyric in that same song -- "pushing forward in a broken world." From "Find Your Way" ("Dream all the dreams within your grasp") to "I Believe" ("I'm always gonna strive to live the way that makes me feel the most alive"), the Shiver solution to a broken world is to fix it.

Auman credits the records the guys in Shiver all grew up on in the '80s for shaping that blend of overtly political tracks and more personal politics that fuels the band's new album.

"It seemed that a lot of the punk bands we grew up on had some politics to their music," Auman says. "Not on every song, but it was there. And it opened our minds to think for ourselves and to question a lot of what's going on out there."

It also shaped the sound of "Last Rides of The Midway," which rocks like Bad Religion with some extra metal -- and, OK, some extra caffeine -- in its diet.

"Initially, I think, the sound of the band was very inspired by some of the Southern California punk bands," Auman says, "but I think you're starting to hear more of the influences from myself and our guitar player, Mark [Delfratte], who joined the band a few years ago, and I think that's kind of shaping it into something more unique, which is good, I think."

The band, which is playing a show in support of the album this weekend in Wilkinsburg at the Mr. Roboto Project, was formed in 1997. Auman and Delfratte joined the band, which also features original vocalist Brue Boul and bassist Jon Sula -- just in time to play the Warped Tour's Pittsburgh stop in 2002. Last year, that lineup spent eight days at Stall No. 2 in LA with noted punk producer Darian Rundall recording "Last Rides of the Midway."

"He's produced a lot of bands that we're all into," Auman says. "I was familiar with his work mainly through Strung Out and the guys in the band knew his production through Pennywise and Suicidal Tendencies. And that's what we were really looking for, was someone who could bring out our fullest potential."

The album title, Aumun says, is meant to represent a loss of innocence, but not his own.

"It's kind of like a path we're going down as a people in our society," he says. "It's almost a foreshadowing of how things are gonna be if we don't try to start turning things around a little bit. It seems as though as time goes on, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and our country is becoming less and less of what it should be, what it used to be. So it's not just a loss of innocence so much as it's a loss of living up to our potential."