Opening a band interview with the sentence "I thought you guys broke up" is probably about as tactful as saying "Gee, I thought you were dead" when sitting down with a long forgotten Hollywood starlet.

But maybe because it's relatively early in the morning or more likely it's due to the fact that he's just happy his group's first new album in three years, is finally getting released, Ty Semaka from The Plaid Tongued Devils accepts the comment merely as a statement on how quiet things have been in their camp for the past couple of years.

"It's the hardest part of being in a band," grants Semaka. "It's not the gigs or the travelling or people not liking your music -- it's staying together. It's so hard."

It's hard but it's something The Devils have done for 11 years, something not many other local rock acts can boast.

Even more remarkable, when you think about it, is that the quintet of accomplished musicians have been able to do it with the type of music they play -- a unique musical borscht combining elements of rock, pop, klezmer, folk and ska.

While still very much working in The Devils' trademark sound, Belladonna -- which gets its official release tonight as part of the closing festivities of One Yellow Rabbit's High Performance Rodeo -- brings Semaka's love of loud music like Foo Fighters and Weezer a little more to the fore.

"We know where the boundaries are, because we've set the boundaries of the style," Semaka says, in explaining how all four of The Devils' records have taken different routes to the same basic destination.

"It's sort of like inventing a genre."

Unfortunatley at times, that genre has left them stuck in the middle -- to rock to play folk clubs, to folk or world to play rock clubs.

Which is part of the reason why The Devils find ways around a lack of venues, like putting on their own musical events, and find new ways to be heard, such as incorporating their music into theatrical productions like In Klezskavania, a rock opera they produced with OYR.

"People don't realize that between the Nickelback's and the Jann Arden's . . . there's this giant world of music," Semaka says.

"But you've got to keep at it or your interesting little ideas is going to fizzle away and someone else is going to do it."

The other reason Semaka keeps at it, and has fought to keep everyone together despite band members' interests in side-projects or other things, is far more personal.

"I just don't want to be that 45-year-old guy in his garage with a bunch of other 45-year-old guys playing math jazz," he says. "I know guys like that. That's so sad. I know they do it for a different reason then I do it, but I don't ever want to do it for that reason. I want to have fun, I want people to hear it. Somewhere in between where you're 25 and want to be famous and 45 and you just want to play music -- I'm somewhere in between right now."