With the release of its major-label debut, "Piece Of Cake," Seattle band Mudhoney may hear some awful jokes about having its cake and eating it, too.

Not only has Mudhoney come this far without altering its brand of unwashed grunge, but the new album - which follows several releases on indie Sub Pop - is coming out at a time when the market does have a predisposition to loud, '70s-influenced Seattle rock'n'roll.

"I'm not about to fuck with that," laughs Dave Katznelson, the band's A&R rep at Reprise Records.

Unlike Katznelson, the label executives Mudhoney met with before signing with Reprise were interested in messing with the band's formula, reports Mark Arm, guitarist and voice of Mudhoney. When looking for a label deal, the band made the rounds carefully, wary of "weird, outrageous promises, like, 'You're gonna be big, big, big!'" Arm quips.

The band met with labels that seemed obvious choices - like DGC, Nirvana's label. But the DGC staff left Arm feeling "they didn't need us. We would have been the little brothers of Sonic Youth and Nirvana, which we didn't need."

The band also met with Sub Pop's distributing label, Caroline, of which Arm says, "They would have been more restrictive of our freedom than a lot of majors." And some majors were not offering much but restrictions, Arm says, like the label whose reps suggested the band would need to "sweeten the guitars."

Katznelson says he is not surprised people wanted to change Mudhoney's sound. "It's funny," he says, "but they think if Mudhoney could sell 100,000 on an indie, they could sell so much more if they sweetened the guitars a little."

Mudhoney just wants to do business as usual, Katznelson says. "My position is to make people bend in their direction," he says, adding that so far that is what's happening. "People at our senior vice presidents' meetings are listening to the record!"

Reprise is also taking care not to alienate the fans who were in on Mudhoney's indie recordings. The label pressed 3,000 copies of the band's first single, "Suck You Dry," on vinyl, and sold the lot to Sub Pop for distribution. The band's plan to release the whole album on vinyl, however, was nixed.

The changes in Mudhoney's career have put no pressures on Arm. Nothing seems to faze him: not the prospect of being billed as a "Nirvanabe," not the media's current love of all things from Seattle, not even the platinum record he is likely to receive for the song Mudhoney contributed to Epic's successful soundtrack to the film "Singles."

In fact, life is really business as usual for Arm, despite his recent change of residence. "Yeah, I just moved," he says. There's a perfect pause. "But I'm still in Seattle."