Always on the fringe of the major league, the Screaming Trees played in the same ball park as their Seattle counterparts – Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam – but never grabbed the frontpage. Until now. Until Dust. A decade after forming in Ellensburg, Washington, the Screaming Trees – the Conner boys, Van (bass) and Garry Lee (guitar), big, bad lads they say, real gentle giants unless riled; drummer Barrett Martin who moonlights in Mad Season with the Chains' Staley and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam; and the dark, gravel-voiced Mark Lanegan – have delivered the disc to smash the mirror of their contemporaries' so-called genius: Dust is the record Soundgarden would love to have made, Alice In Chains may never make and Pearl Jam, so far, are too entrenched in their ways to make.

On Dust, the Screaming Trees take a step into the past, grab the best of Mountain and quasi-psychedelic Led Zeppelin, rip into their imaginations, grab Benmont Tench, of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, for some mellotron, organ, electric piano, piano and Wurlitzer, add tablas, sitar, djembe, cello and harmonium, write the songs of their lives and unleash a melodic, harmonic, rock monster of towering strength and massive beauty.

In Indianapolis, part-way through the Lollapollooza tour, Barrett Martin has just finished coffee with Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden, they've been mulling over some harsh realities.

"We were saying like when you're on tour your senses are heightened and you're more aware of what's going on," he muses. "You see things with clearer eyes, because you aren't in the protection of your home environment where you're just removed from everything – not that we live behind walls or anything, we all live in houses like everybody else, but you're a bit more removed from what's happening."

Over the next hour, Martin unravels a sweeping picture of not only the America he fears, but the responsibility he now sees as vital that the Seattle brigade adopt as some of rock's leading icons and spokespersons, of the four years that led to the magnificent Dust, of heroes, respect and the close-knit fraternity that the Seattle connection has become as they finally step outside the limitations of grunge and make the music of their dreams.

"Seattle isn't dead; it's exactly the opposite," Martin says. "Everybody has made a bunch of records and they wanted to collaborate with each other.

"It's like the old Chess Records when they were getting all those different guys together like Eric Clapton on guitar and the Stones rhythm section and Howlin' Wolf or like the old jazz records where they'd get all these guys together and they'd make a record: you got (Charlie) Mingus and Thelonius (Monk) and Max Roach and Miles (Davis) and (John) Coltrane playing together and all those guys are the heavyweights of all time but sometimes they wanted to collaborate. Likewise us.

"It really is honestly a small supportive community. We're all in Seattle and we all run into each other and work in the studio and play together and hang out. It's just kind of fun to do it. And I agree that it's important that the guys who set the pace a while ago now have to go on and take it somewhere.

"We're all a little bit older but we're not old men by any means. We're all in our late 20s/early 30s, have developed our songwriting and abilities to play other instruments and want to branch out. Now we have the confidence to do so."

And on Dust they finally put it all together. At times, it's hard to believe it's the Screaming Trees that are coming down hard through a tabla led bottom end while Lanegan sings some pure notes and harmonics he probably never dreamed he'd find in himself.

And you know Martin is proud, and rightly so, the Trees threw away an album to find these moments. Van Conner put it straight recently when he said, " ... In the past we'd just go record the thing – now we actually consider whether we like the song or not. In the old days it was like 'hey, somebody's gonna give us money to make a record – let's go make one!'. Now we want to cut something you'd hear in 10 years and it would still sound good. That's why we took so long with Dust, trying to make it timeless."

Martin laughs, "Van never mixes his words but that's pretty much it. We wanted to try and experiment but we've never really had the time before or the kind of producer that leant to doing that. But when we got George Drakoulias, well, he's this amazing person with this incredibly vast knowledge of music and all styles and influences and when we started talking and working up this stuff he was really receptive to it and happy to turn to the odd instrumentation."

Dust is out now through Epic/Sony.

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