In the late '80s when Mount St. Seattle blew its top and unleashed the reign of grunge, one of its byproducts was a seething, hissing mass of magma known as Mudhoney. Along with Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, Mudhoney epitomized the sound of what became '90s rock. But while its peers realized substantial critical and commercial success, Mudhoney remained an enigma: sometimes devastating, sometimes seemingly indifferent, generally not living up to its purported legend. But with its overpowering new LP, Tomorrow Hit Today, Mudhoney has finally made its masterpiece. From its opening burst of distortion to its final concussive convulsion, Tomorrow Hit Today is a Black Sabbath vs. The Electric Prunes cage match, a harrowing torrent of psychedelic sludge ripping through an effete post-rock Legoland like Armageddon's threshing machine.

I spoke with Mudhoney co-founder, guitarist and singer Mark Arm last week while the band was on tour in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Mark, I know the new record hasn't been out for very long but what kind of response has it been getting?

Depends on who you're talking to. It seems like in America it's been fairly favorable. But some of the English press has been none too favorable. But I think that has something to do with their fashion sense.

I guess you've exhausted the two-week cool period they generally allot bands.

That's my guess. One article basically started off by saying, 'If Mudhoney insists on playing antique instruments such as guitars and bass and drums,' and it just went on from there.

In the breathless British music scene Mudhoney is probably considered the equivalent of a medieval music consort. But the new LP sounds to my ears like the most intense record, start to finish, you guys have made to date. Does that ring true to you?

Yeah. I haven't listened to it for a while, but when we were putting the record together and figuring out the song sequence, it seemed like it was definitely hitting all the way through.

Why do you think it turned out that way?

I don't know exactly why. I think one possibility would be that we had 25 songs that we had already been playing live beforehand. Of those, we only recorded 19. So we kind of whittled the record down to its essence.

Mudhoney has been tagged over the years as a talented but underachieving band. You're alleged to have a don't give a damn attitude about some of your records. What's your response to that?

My response is that the whole reason we started playing music wasn't to 'make it.' We're still trying to keep things fun. When you get too serious, it takes away from what little band comradery is still there after 10 years. There are times where you just do stuff for the sake of doing it. But at the time we're doing it, I don't think we're ever intentionally going 'oh, this doesn't mean shit.' But I think we've kind of learned some things over the years, and that's why this record took so long to come together. We wanted to make an effort to make a good album all the way through. And that's why we bothered spending the time to slowly write a bunch of songs for it.

Has it been strange over the years to see the bands that were your peers in the initial Seattle scene go on to become so successful while Mudhoney has never really attained that kind of acclaim?

It was weird in the sense of, oh my God, my friend Stoney is now a millionaire. But it was never weird on any kind of level like, gee, I wish we could be as big as such and such a band. We've had a pretty clear understanding from the get-go about the potential of our music. I mean, even the slower, more relaxed songs we do are pretty raw. Most of my favorite records haven't exactly been radio-friendly. I tend to enjoy unpolished music.

Now that grunge is falling from fashion, do you consider that to be a good, bad or inconsequential development from Mudhoney's perspective?

Well, (affecting pretentiousness) I don't really like to think of us as a grunge band. I prefer to be called a pre-post-rock rock band. Let's get the categories straight! Actually in terms of what I've been playing, what I've been into hasn't really changed all that much since I first began playing music when I was 19. There's a single-mindedness in terms of the stuff I really, really love, and I've never been persuaded by the winds of change. I was doing this stuff well before there was ever a possibility that it was ever going to be popular. I always championed what I thought was an underdog, heavy-psychedelic kind of thing, the roots of punk rock.

Actually, what I was getting at was, over the last seven years, you must have grown rather sick of hearing about grunge, and now that it won't be around much longer, that must be a refreshing change. For example, it might now become fairly obvious that what you play has nothing to do with what's trendy.

Yeah, but, you know, things aren't really that obvious to most people. To a lot of people, we'll always be forever associated with grunge, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it. But I'm not going to worry about it. You know, think of poor Rod Stewart. He's always going to be associated in some peoples' minds with, like, getting gallons of (semen) pumped out of his stomach. It could be worse.