Who says rock is dead? Definitely not the bands invading Zaphod Beeblebrox in the next few nights:

BY DIVINE RIGHT, TOMORROW: Far behind the 40 or so members who've passed through the ranks of Ohio's Guided By Voices, By Divine Right frontman Jose Contreras has achieved a record of his own in Canadian indie circles.

"I think I have something like 20 ex-band members," laughs Contreras, who's reconfigured the BDR lineup -- Colleen Hixenbaugh on guitar and keyboards, Dylan Hudecki on bass and drummer John Hall. "But it's cool with me, part of the flow.

"And it's always been for the best. When things get tense, I'm really good at keeping things healthy -- sometimes I just say, 'Okay, I think it's time for you to do something else.' But we're all friends still."

Despite BDR's lineup shuffles and, after a three-year stay, being dropped from the Nettwerk label last year, what hasn't suffered has been the music. Contreras' knack for catchy melodic rock has carried BDR through 1997's All Hail Discordia and '99's Bless This Mess.

Their newest, titled Good Morning Beautiful, which Contreras and pals have been pushing hard at this year's Canadian Music Week (CMW) and North By Northeast (NXNE) festival slots in T.O., is slated for an Oct. 2 release on the Warner-distributed Linus Entertainment label.

The 12-track mix of driving, melodic pop with sprinkles of shoegazer rock and electronica has a band 'feel' about it, even though Contreras wrote, arranged and "played most of everything on it.

"I was going for spontaneous energy. Problem was, it took me 14 months to make this," he says with a chuckle. "We didn't belabour this, it just happened that way."