The Tea Party are Canada's best kept secret. Outside of Canada only Australia has woken up to the talent of The Tea Party. In Australia, when they tour, they play venues normally afforded the likes of Pearl Jam. But in the USA, they are not only unknown, they battle to even get released. So what do Australia and Canada get that the rest of the world haven't woken up too? Simply a classic rock band bred out of today.

The sounds of Tea Party are The Doors meet Led Zeppelin. Singer Jeff Martin is Jim Morrison reincarnated. The music has all the energy of early Zep to complete the formula. Both bands find their inspiration in the East. It is something that brought Martin and Led Zep's Jimmy Page together many years ago on a personal level.

The cross pollination of influence is uncanny. "The Interzone" opening the album is pure Physical Graffiti. The build has an uncanny resemblance.

The Tea Party's Interzone Mantras sticks more to a rock base than the previous album where they experimented with Eastern sounds and instruments. And all these sounds come from just three band members. Bands that make it past three albums well and truly create their own comfort zone. The Tea Party are no different. These three guys have worked together for such a long time that the band has become its entity.

"Apathy" once again has drummer Jeff Burrows reincarnated as the ghost of John Bonham. "The Master & The Margarita" gets down deep and dirty. The band compliments their restrictive three sounds with various instruments throughout including trombone and sax throughout the journey.

The difference between this and previous Tea Party albums is the solid sound. This is a band sure of their own direction. When they get to "Soulbreaking", they bring it back to sheer beauty. The ballad pulls back on the band and focuses on the hypnotic vocal of Martin. "Lullaby" pulls back even further the experiments once conducted early in then 70s by the likes of Frank Zappa and the original Alice Cooper band. The Tea Party known how to turn a song into a complete experience.

"Must Must" delves back to the Eastern roots of the previous few albums but "White Water Siren" grabs that Led Zep III acoustic sound and brings in right into 2001. Maintaining the Zep rage, "Cathartik" focuses on the bass and is reminiscent of Dazed and Confused.

The final few moments are pure musical. The very name "Requiem" conjures up passing but the term can also mean reflection, or a look at the best of the past. The Tea Party certainly capture the best of the past musically. "Mantra" is also a musical highlight and a fitting departure for the album. This is pure Tea Party building as it progresses and allowing Martins deep Morrisonesque voice to have some sort of accompaniment from the band playing up the bass and drums element. Yes, The Doors could have done this one live. Clocking it just over 8 minutes, Jim would be proud.

Tea Party fans, take note. This band has come of age.

Chart Attack
by Darrin Keene

With The Interzone Mantras, The Tea Party's fifth full-length album, the trio has come full circle. The disc initially displays a raw, more visceral sound, hearkening back to the band's early albums, Splendor Solis and The Edges Of Twilight. Underneath the volume, however, vocalist-guitarist Jeff Martin layers songs like "Angels" and "Soulbreaking" with strong, chiming melodies. Such moments are more in line with TRIPtych, the band's last original full-length. One thing is certain: this is unmistakably a Tea Party disc, with the trademark Middle Eastern and Northern African musical touches. Martin's subject matter also remains cerebral: "Interzone" and "The Master & Margarita" are based respectively on books by literary icons William S. Burroughs and Mikhail Bulgakov, while "Must Must" appropriates the life-affirming Sufi themes of late Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The Interzone Mantras isn't all about daily affirmation; lyrically, it's the band's darkest album to date. Martin, who was going through a broken relationship while working on the album, unleashes his most stark and revealing lyrics to date ("I've been through the strangest of mazes/Somewhat self-induced hazes/I got through and now back to you," from "Dust To Gold"). But while he sings of his own lack of balance on tracks like "Cathartik" and the Nick Cave-inspired "Apathy," the band's musical focus has never been stronger. For all of its esoteric themes, The Interzone Mantras reinforces the Puritan idea that good things come from hardship.

Winnipeg Sun
by Darryl Sterdan

If you wanna know how great the new Tea Party disc is, just ask Jeff Martin, their ever-so-humble leader. He'll be the first to tell you. "It's our hardest rock record," the singer-guitarist was recently quoted in Canadian Musician magazine. "And it'll probably be the hardest Canadian rock record ever." Ahem. Martin's blushing humility aside, we do have to admit he has something of a point - at least as far as the first part of his claim is concerned. The Interzone Mantras, the sixth full-length (counting an independent 1991 release) from this Toronto trio, is a much harder-hitting, straightforward rock record than their last outings. On many if not most of these dozen tracks, Martin, drummer Jeff Burrows and bassist Stuart Chatwood lighten up a couple of shades. Cutting back on the orchestrated grandiloquence, infinite overdubbing and sample-loop studio wizardry that usually smother their songs, the band make something of a return to the real live power-trio dynamics and guitar-driven sound of their earlier albums - a swaggering, if irritatingly derivative blend of swaggering Led Zep crunch and half-baked Jim Morrisonian mysticism, garnished with a variety of Middle Eastern flavours and spices.

Sometimes these old ingredients produce a tasty dish. Opener Interzone is a heavy-metal belly dance of the first order, undulating along to a propulsively serpentine beat and melody, with some snappy horns to give it a little extra kick. Lullaby is a fever-dream that moves from opiated drowsiness to withdrawal-symptom edginess, with some decent dive-bombing, feedback-god guitar mangling thrown in for good measure. The smoky, percolating Apathy even finds Martin gearing down his throaty bellow to a Leonard Cohenish rasp - part of the time, anyway. Too bad it isn't all the time. But let"s face it - not knowing when to leave well enough alone has always been Martin's problem as a songwriter and producer. Here, even reining himself in, he still goes over the top far too often in all the usual ways: Unnecessarily bloated arrangements, gratuitous guitar overdubs, wow-I'm-so-deep lyrics lifted from (sorry, inspired by) the works of writers such as William Burroughs (Interzone) and filmmakers like Wim Wenders (Angels). If Martin really wanted to get back to basics, he could have - and, we submit, should have - recorded this live in the studio without overdubs. That's about as basic as it gets. And that could have been a much harder record - both in terms of sonic oomph and technical challenge - than this one.

Still, Interzone Mantras is a step in the right direction. Especially for a band that shoots itself in the foot as often as these guys.

amazon.com
by Shawn Conner

Whatever one thinks of the Tea Party's ambitious yet commercial rock, the band deserves credit for not being afraid to come off as pretentious as a sack of Rush records. True to the trio's nature, The Interzone Mantras--the group's fifth full-length studio disc--is a study in excess. From an insert that folds out into a 16-panel poster of a multi-armed, multi-eyed deity to a song title borrowed from a Russian novel ("The Master and Margarita") to deep-throated spiritual pronouncements and everything-but-the-didgeridoo arrangements, the album never shies away from piling on more sound and more self-importance. That it works more often than not is testament to the band's knack for strong melodies and a compelling blend of riff-o-rama guitars and orchestral atmospherics, as on "Soulbreaking" and the acoustic ballad "White Water Siren." Barrel-chested rockers like "Lullaby" and the white-hot horn-driven opener, "Interzone," add some oomph to the proceedings, though nonfans will find the disc's more dirgelike moments ("Dust to Gold") trying. The album ends as it should, though, with an eight-minute denouement of crunchy guitars, Middle Eastern textures, and swelling strings that build to the decidedly unpretentious mantra, "Love is all we have / Love is all we need."

Anemic Magazine
by Simon

The Tea Party have got a very big fan base in Australia and there´s no reason why they shouldn't have after you listen to their latest offering "The Interzone Mantras". The Canadian boys sure haven't disappointed people with this album because of the simple fact that it is brilliant. It is hard to catergorize The Tea Party as far as genre goes, in my opinion The Tea Party are The Tea Party. This album simybolises rock n roll of this day and even though people might argue with that statement which they are quite entitled too, thats just my opinion and in the end my opinion dosen't count for much. Songs on this album that stand out in my opinion would be "Angels" "Apathy", "Soulbreaking", "White Water Siren" and "Cathartik". Even though I can listen to the whole album from start to finish these are the tracks that give you the sudden flashback on how rock n´ roll used to be and I think the music industry could be alot stronger if more bands like The Tea Party were around so it could give the younger generation a feel for rock n roll instead of lisinting to catchy phrases by Limp Bizkit and so forth. Although The Tea Party have been around the bend a couple of times as far as making albums is concerned I think this one has set the platform for their career. I say this because it's an album that you can listen regardless of how your feeling and what mood you´re in. Happy or depressed you can listen to the album and get the kick out of it despite what mood your in. Not many bands can do this and that´s why I think this is the best offering The Tea Party have given their fans. Great album, I have regreted waiting this long to actually buy it, maybe the money issue was the problem for that. But seriously if this is in your list of cd's that you want to buy put it at the top of your list and go and get it.