There’s no point doing a job unless you are truly excited about the idea of going to work, that line of thinking obviously resonating with Josh Landau of the California skate-metal trio the Shrine.

When he’s reached at home in Venice Beach, the singer-guitarist reports that he’s enjoying a rare moment of downtime. The Shrine—which includes bassist-singer Court Murphy and drummer Jeff Murray—has been living out of suitcases and tour vans for the past six months, with a good chunk of that time spent crisscrossing Europe. Rather than being burned-out by life on the road, Landau can hardly wait to return to action.

“This is all incredible—hell, yeah!” the California-raised musician gushes. “Like, we were just in Europe for two months, and we played almost 60 shows. People love rock ’n’ roll over there the way that America used to. This was our fourth time over doing Europe, and people were just nuts. We sold a ton of merch, including our new album, to where it was all just fucking epic. It was kind of a bummer to come home. But I guess now that we’re back it’s summertime down here, so we can go skate before we go back out, so that’s awesome too.”

The Shrine’s new album is titled Bless Off. Right from the hard-charging first track, “Destroyers”, it’s pretty obvious what has the kids of Europe revved up and ready to go, the band hitting a skater-friendly sweet spot between made-in-the-USA mid-’80s hardcore and classic British steel.

Songs revolve around such diversions as spray-painting churches, torching neighbourhood schools, working shitty day jobs for zero reward, and drugs. The last pastime fuels one of the record’s standout tracks, “Tripping Corpse”. Showing he’s a man who knows how to tell a story, Landau is more than happy to reveal the inspiration behind that song, which matches thunderstruck riffage with lyrics like “He doesn’t care, he’s living free/Acid casualty.”

“The song is straight-up about a friend of ours that we miss,” Landau says. “He toured with us—he was like our road dog. Then he totally went Grateful Dead and had to get away from us. I don’t know if he was spending too much time driving around the country with us, but it was like he had to go off on his own path. All of a sudden he disappeared to watch Phil Lesh webcasts.

“When we started, we were doing acid a bit, even while playing shows, but it got to the point where we all mellowed out a bit while he got even heavier into it. He got into all sorts of other stuff too—psychedelics. It was like he was our best friend forever, but now he’s totally gone. I saw him recently, after not seeing him for years, and he was like, ‘Aww, yeah man, I was going to come to your show the other night, but the Red Cross was doing this thing where, if you gave blood, you got a ticket to go see Warren Haynes play Jerry Garcia’s guitar. So after I gave blood, I was too tired to come see you.’ ”

Bless Off has enough tab-of-orange-sunshine guitar flourishes (check out the hurricane that is “Napalm”) to suggest that the Shrine hasn’t completely lost its taste for psychedelics. Mostly, though, the record seems engineered for getting riotously fucked-up and hitting abandoned swimming pools with a vintage Alva skateboard. For every stuck-in-fresh-tar grinder (“The Duke”), you get salvos of punk-tinted road-rash rock. “Worship” roars along like Motörhead with a blown gasket, “Bless Off” serves up the kind of riffage that causes untreatable whiplash, and “Hellride” is a rampaging boogie monster that makes you wish the ’70s had never ended.

“When I write riffs and songs I don’t like to repeat myself,” Landau says. “So, after I’ve written something like ‘Worship’, I don’t want to write another song like that again. What happens when I write is that, after being inspired by some Sabbath, I’ll be listening to the Circle Jerks’ Golden Shower of Hits, and then we’ll jam and something will hit based on that record. Even though they are one of my favourite bands ever, when you listen to Motörhead, all of their songs are sort of the same. I don’t want to be one of those guys who forms a character and then one style of music—who then thinks you have to start another side band to play another kind of music. I mean, we’ve all got a bunch of mixed-up, fucked-up record collections.”

From a production standpoint, Bless Off’s 11 tracks smell of fried circuitry, dirty shag carpeting, and cheap trailer-park speed, which probably has everything to do with the fact that the band recorded the album on the cheap at home.

That screamingly lo-fi, refreshingly anarchic approach to business has the Shrine at the forefront of an underground skate-rock movement that includes the likes of FIDLAR and Hot Lunch. Landau and his cohorts have jumped to the head of that emerging scene thanks partly to their association with some heavy hitters. Original Black Flag bassist Chuck Dukowski discovered the group early on, eventually producing its debut album, 2011’s Primitive Blast. Pioneering ’70s skateboard legend Jim Muir is a major booster, to the point where he was happy to endorse the Dogtown Skates–inspired cover art for Bless Off.

“An old skate buddy of mine was like, ‘You better ask Jim Muir for permission—he might have some thoughts about it,’ ” Landau says. “Jim Muir was like, ‘Oh, dude, I back you guys 100 percent. And I wanna make a board for that for sure.’ We saw him the other night—he came to one of our shows. It was like the surreal highlight of my life. There was our buddy Chuck from Black Flag, Jim Muir, and [’70s surf icon] Jeff Ho, all hanging out in a room with us before we played. It was like my mind had just fucking exploded. Like, ‘If we just stopped right here and right now, this would be the coolest fucking thing that ever happened to me.’ ”

In case it’s not obvious, the dude is enjoying his job.

The Shrine plays Electric Owl on Tuesday (May 6).