If you wanna know how great the new Tea Party disc is, just ask Jeff Martin, their ever-so-humble leader. He'll be the first to tell you. "It's our hardest rock record," the singer-guitarist was recently quoted in Canadian Musician magazine. "And it'll probably be the hardest Canadian rock record ever." Ahem. Martin's blushing humility aside, we do have to admit he has something of a point - at least as far as the first part of his claim is concerned. The Interzone Mantras, the sixth full-length (counting an independent 1991 release) from this Toronto trio, is a much harder-hitting, straightforward rock record than their last outings. On many if not most of these dozen tracks, Martin, drummer Jeff Burrows and bassist Stuart Chatwood lighten up a couple of shades. Cutting back on the orchestrated grandiloquence, infinite overdubbing and sample-loop studio wizardry that usually smother their songs, the band make something of a return to the real live power-trio dynamics and guitar-driven sound of their earlier albums - a swaggering, if irritatingly derivative blend of swaggering Led Zep crunch and half-baked Jim Morrisonian mysticism, garnished with a variety of Middle Eastern flavours and spices.

Sometimes these old ingredients produce a tasty dish. Opener Interzone is a heavy-metal belly dance of the first order, undulating along to a propulsively serpentine beat and melody, with some snappy horns to give it a little extra kick. Lullaby is a fever-dream that moves from opiated drowsiness to withdrawal-symptom edginess, with some decent dive-bombing, feedback-god guitar mangling thrown in for good measure. The smoky, percolating Apathy even finds Martin gearing down his throaty bellow to a Leonard Cohenish rasp - part of the time, anyway. Too bad it isn't all the time. But let"s face it - not knowing when to leave well enough alone has always been Martin's problem as a songwriter and producer. Here, even reining himself in, he still goes over the top far too often in all the usual ways: Unnecessarily bloated arrangements, gratuitous guitar overdubs, wow-I'm-so-deep lyrics lifted from (sorry, inspired by) the works of writers such as William Burroughs (Interzone) and filmmakers like Wim Wenders (Angels). If Martin really wanted to get back to basics, he could have - and, we submit, should have - recorded this live in the studio without overdubs. That's about as basic as it gets. And that could have been a much harder record - both in terms of sonic oomph and technical challenge - than this one.

Still, Interzone Mantras is a step in the right direction. Especially for a band that shoots itself in the foot as often as these guys.

Track Listing 1. The Interzone
2. Angels
3. Apathy
4. The Master and Margarita
5. Soulbreaking
6. Lullaby
7. Must Must
8. White Water Siren
9. Cathartik
10. Dust To Gold
11. Requiem
12. Mantra