Collective Soul is are one of those interesting little bands that seem to pop up from nowhere once every couple of years to unexpectedly grab the music scene by the scruff of the neck. Initially there’s seemingly little of note to distinguish such a musical commodity from the rest of the rock and roll rabble. Their look? Rather mundane. Their sound? Hard to describe. Their approach? Laid back rather than full attack. Neither fish nor foul, heavy or light, traditional or alternative, such groups often come across as the ultimate anachronism in an industry that thrives on flash, thrash, and mucho cash. But once one delves behind the superficialities, and looks beyond the labels, a new world filled with unexpected depth, overflowing imagination and deftly controlled power is often revealed- that is the world Collective Soul calls home.

In fact, it could be said that this Georgia-based quintet seem to exist in a unique musical universe of their own design- a place where time, trends and traditions appear to stand still and where rock-solid musical foundations serve as the cornerstone for CS’s musical empire. It’s taken band leader Ed Roland barely four years to rise from being a struggling young songwriter on the verge of giving up on his rock and roll dreams to become one of the brightest lights in the ‘90s rock galaxy. Along with bandmates Dean Roland, Ross Childress, Will Turpin, and Shane Evans, Roland has accomplished the difficult feat of creating a musical catalogue- one that now consists of three discs, Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid, Collective Soul and the band’s new Disciplined Breakdown- that seems to improve with time, adding successive chapters to his fast-growing legacy as one of contemporary music’s true visionaries.

“All we do, and all we want to do is write and play good rock and roll,” Roland said. “I’ve always preferred to leave the categorization and the labeling to other people. They can call what we do whatever they want, it doesn’t bother me. As long as they listen to it, and as long as they like it, I’m real happy.”

The lilting, quirky, eminently listenable style of Collective Soul has to embody what may very well be one of the classic rags to riches tales of recent rock history. All the elements of a top-notch Hollywood drama are there; would have happened to Ed Roland’s dream if one of his self-recorded, self-financed, self-produced demo tracks hadn’t landed on the desk of an Orlando, Florida, DJ who, for whatever reason, decided to play the song to death? What might have happened to the band’s future if a major label hadn’t stepped in and demanded that Roland reform Collective Soul (a band that he had broken asunder a year earlier) before they signed him to a deal? And how bright would the group’s future have been if superstar attractions ranging from Aerosmith to Van Halen hadn’t opened the welcome wagon for Roland and his troops once they were ready to hit the tour trail? Without each and every one of these lucky breaks, Roland knows that at this very moment he might well be back home in Georgia teaching guitar during the day and writing songs for other artists long into the night.

“It’s been interesting,” he stated casually. “Looking back, things just seemed to come together in a really unexpected way. I don’t really dwell on ‘what ifs’ that often, but it’s true that things could have been a heck of a lot different for me. It just worked out really well. I owe a lot of favors to a lot of people, but hopefully the music we’ve made over the last few years kind of stands on its own.”

Indeed, the music contained on Disciplined Breakdown, stands as a crowning achievement in Collective Soul’s brief but memorable recording career. With the group’s distinctive three-guitar alignment kicking each track into high gear, Roland and his cohorts have constructed an air-tight collection of rockers that run the gamut from heart-tugging pop to full-throttle hard rock. While certain elements of songs like In Between, Blame, and Declaration may bring to mind such recent CS chart-toppers as Gel and December,in-all group’s third disc is a quantum leap forward in terms of both the writing and execution of the band’s expansive array of tunes. Roland is the first to admit that in style and scope the new disc is a lineal descendent of the quixotic musical meanderings that made 1994’s Collective Soul such a smash, but he also stresses that Disciplined Breakdown clearly represents a further step up the band’s evolutionary ladder in its methodology.

“We spent a lot of time working on this album, mostly because we had some problems with our former managers that we had to get out of the way before we could really focus on the music,” he said. “All the time we were in court during the day, we’d be writing new songs at night. We just set up the instruments in the corner of my kitchen at home, and we actually recorded most of the album right there. One of the few things I’ve splurged on since we’ve had some success has been some really good recording equipment, and now we can do just the same quality of work at my house as we can do in a studio. Because we really took our time and worked out each and every aspect of the songs, the album has kind of a cohesive quality that we haven’t had before. I like that.”

With the legal fights with management now behind them, and their home-recorded disc already sailing to the top of the sales charts, Collective Soul seem happier and more focused than ever before. Now they feel primed and ready to tackle another challenge- perhaps the biggest one of their career. Rather than choosing to return to the road in a cushy opening act slot for one of rock’s biggest bands, this time around the CS brigade is determined to headline their own road show from Day one. Ed Roland knows that such a venture has the potential to present a myriad of challenges and a ton of headaches that the band has never faced before. But these days Mr. Roland has good reason to be just brimming with confidence, and no challenge placed in front of Collective Soul seems too big or too daunting to be conquered.

“It would be so easy to just go out with another really big band, play some of those great arenas, and just take it easy,” he said. “But we don’t want to do that. We’ve got three albums now, and it’s time for us to step out on out own. We want to get up there and play for two hours every night. We want to work up a good sweat. We’ve learned that you’ve got to take each and every challenge head-on, otherwise you’re just never gonna reach your full potential.”