Air raid sirens blaring, machine guns firing: Within minutes, Crown the Empire make clear that the world in which they’ve set their sophomore opus, The Resistance: Rise of the Runaways, is one that needs saving. The Texas metalcore upstarts’ ambitious follow-up to 2012’s The Fallout screams for a “Call to Arms” in its urgent opening crescendo, initiating a narrative arc that takes listeners from darkest hours to inspiring revolt—all in the name of human individuality. This is an often-operatic set of songs wherein skittering electronics, soaring choruses, and sternum-rattling breakdowns live side by side, as they do on the exhilarating title track and the standouts “Machines” and “Millennia.”