The Interzone Mantras by The Tea Party

The Interzone Mantras, the Tea Party's sixth album, came out on EMI in 2001, and it takes its name from William S. Burroughs' story collection Interzone and from the Canadian trio's fascination with eastern mysticism and esoteric philosophy. After the carefully built studio constructions of Transmission and Triptych, Jeff Martin, producing, put the band in a rehearsal room facing one another with just guitar, bass and drums, and they got the whole thing down in twenty days. Jeff Burrows nailed every drum track in one take.

You can hear the adrenaline. The 1970s rock swagger and world-music drones of the early records are back, laced with a little of Triptych's electronica and balladry, with Stuart Chatwood on bass and keyboards. Martin wrote the words on a holiday in Prague, drawing on Aleister Crowley, Mikhail Bulgakov, Wim Wenders and Greek myth, with Morpheus turning up on "Lullaby". It went gold in Canada, debuted at number 6 in Australia, their best showing there, and was nominated for Rock Album of the Year at the 2003 Junos. It was also one of the last albums made at Quebec's Le Studio before it closed.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.