Breaking up is hard rock on 12 Angry Months. Guitar-and-drums duo Local H arrived out of Chicago in 1995 with raucous but catch-in-the-throat songs that slammed together a bridge from the Replacements to Nirvana. Guitarist-singer Scott Lucas used to write with sardonic humor, but he and drummer Brian St. Clair dumped the irony for this ferociously concentrated album. The concept is basic and brilliant: a song for every bitter month of a year of off-again/on-again romance, from splitting the record collection in January to “A token e-mail/A drunken text/A sorry go-round of cell-phone sex” in October. Grungy riffs seethe and then crash; acoustic respites break into desperate electric stomps. The passion, rage and feedback are inseparable.

Download “April—White Belt Boys,” “September—Simple Pleas,” “October—Machine Shed Wrestling”