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TORONTO - Crash Karma's debut album features plenty of 1990s alt-rock hallmarks: crunchy guitar riffs, chugging percussion, soaring solos and even former I Mother Earth frontman Edwin's inimitable howling.
It's 2010, and they figure they're right on time.
With comebacks confirmed from former alternative heroes such as Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, members of Crash Karma - which also includes veterans from such '90s Canadian rock mainstays as Our Lady Peace and the Tea Party - think they could be standing on the cusp of an alternative rock revival.
"It seems like it," bassist Amir Epstein told The Canadian Press on a balmy Friday in downtown Toronto.
"I grew up in that time, and anybody who liked that type of music always likes that type of music. ... I think people just kind of miss good rock 'n' roll without much gimmick."
So, what else characterizes the sound of the '90s?
"Low on the irony scale," said guitarist Mike Turner, who left Our Lady Peace in 2001. "(But) not overly sincere. We don't want to be too preachy, angsty or ironic."
"Just good rock," Epstein added. "We're not changing the world, just playing good music, I hope."
The new group has just dropped their self-titled debut, a few months after first single "Awake" dropped on Canadian radio.
They formed around 2008, largely due to the work of Epstein, who began writing material he hoped to pitch to Edwin for his next solo album.
But soon, Epstein's vision expanded. He wanted to start a band, and he knew whom he wanted in it. He approached each member individually until he had everyone onboard.
"I was stupid enough to think this would work, and somehow it did," he said.
Epstein had been a fan of each of his bandmates' old groups, and he was fairly adamant that Turner, Edwin and former Tea Party drummer Jeff Burrows play the same way he remembered them playing.
For instance, when he heard unfamiliar sounds coming from Turner's amp, Epstein found himself advising his bandmate to instead "do that Mike Turner stuff."
And during their live shows, Crash Karma has been dipping into the discographies of their old bands.
Their live set weaves in versions of I Mother Earth's "Levitate" and "One More Astronaut," the Tea Party's "Fire in the Head" and Our Lady Peace's "Clumsy."
So they're certainly willing to acknowledge their pasts. But despite what the band's press materials say, they loathe the idea of being called a supergroup.
"It just makes you uncool automatically," Epstein said. "I mean, who calls Them Crooked Vultures a supergroup? And they're far super-er than us.
"It's poison."
Relations within the band have been notably non-toxic, Turner and Epstein say. So far, they insist Crash Karma has been unencumbered by the ego that can come part and parcel with decades in the music business.
Of course, they're still in the honeymoon phase. Check in after their first Western tour - which begins Thursday in Winnipeg - and Turner jokes it could be a completely different story.
"It's been long enough away (from being in a band) for all of us that we don't remember the stuff that we really hated," Turner said.
"You don't think, 'Oh, I'm playing a bar tour and I really have to go No. 2 and there's no (bathrooms).
"You don't think about that stuff right now. Get back to me in a few months and I'll be all sour and bitter about it."
