Stereophonics has reached the small notch in the tree marked 15 years. These days that’s some kind of achievement. Of course, it hasn’t all been trouble-free. Stereophonics has ridden the highs and lows of superstardom, surviving the departure of original drummer Stuart Cable, some management problems and the inevitable physical and emotional toll that being a major international act takes.

And Stereophonics have been major. They were virtually inescapable from 1998 to 2003 as the albums Performance and Cocktails (1999), Just Enough Education To Perform (2001) and You Gotta Go There To Come Back (2003) saw it top the charts, play to monster outdoor audiences of up to 65,000 and dominate the airwaves. That kind of success takes its toll.

Returning in 2005 with Pushing the Senses and new drummer Javier Weyler, the trio played to its biggest audience yet at the Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park. The album became the band’s fourth consecutive #1 on the UK charts. Now it is unleashing Pull The Pin, which doesn’t mean the band is about to quit, far from it.

Weyler, who is London after returning from a promotional tour of Germany, Holland and Russia with fellow ‘Phonics Kelly Jones and Richard Jones (no relation), says that this time around the band has reached that happy place where it just doesn’t care what anybody else thinks. Kelly makes the point strongly in the band’s latest bio: ‘Part of me doesn’t give a shit anymore,” he confesses. “The stage I am at now is very close to how I was when I was 21. I’ve learned how to deal with the ups and downs of being in a band, people liking you, people not liking you, how you look on a magazine cover, how everyone else thinks you should behave, all that is not in my head anymore, it’s gone.”

Ironically, Javier says, Jones is nursing a gash to the arm after being involved with a stoush with some over-zealous security at the Vodafone Music Awards. “I think they had too much testosterone,” Weyler says with a chuckle.

That little setback aside, the band is pleased with what is by all accounts ano-fuss album – at one stage it recorded 10 songs in 10 days and recording sessions stretched across only five or six weeks. The result is a fresh, tight record that plays to band’s obvious strengths – its innate sense of melody – but still carries a tougher edge.

“For us, it’s been about getting back to the basics,” Weyler says. “We want to continue to grow as writers and performers and keep ourselves hungry to that. That’s important – to stay hungry. If you start to take things for granted you get lazy.

“You know the boys had a bit of a dark time a while ago with Stuart leaving and management but now the band is at a really good place. Everything picked up on the last tour and we found ourselves enjoying performing and when it was over, enjoying recording, rather than thinking about the other things that get in the way. After all, you’re only in a band to pick up girls and get drunk.” There’s a quiet chuckle after that.

And while that might be a fundamental, or a cliché, he agrees the industry has changed a lot recently and is continuing to do so at an ever increasing pace but he also points out those change haven’t affected Stereophonics too much.

“It was good thing they did a lot of touring over the first decade - 150 shows a year, 12-15 interviews a day sometimes. That developed a strong fan base that has lasted. With the new media, technology, marketing and all the new tools like My Space they use for bands, it doesn’t count for anything if you don’t have a great fan base fan around the world.

“I also think people’s attention span has also shortened over the past 15 years so it doesn’t help anybody now trying to make a name for themselves.

“There are a couple of other things that haven’t changed, as well. You still have to have a band writing songs and making records. And the industry still has to figure out what it is doing and how it is going to get the artist across to the audience.

“Bottom line is that artists are still going to be able to make and play music regardless of how they are marketed. And everybody has the same goal – to succeed and survive. For that you do need the backing of a big infrastructure.”

In that sense developments have worked in Stereophonics favour with the giant Universal Music buying V2, the label they are on, so they’ve ended with best of both worlds. The backing of a big organisation and some of the people who worked with them at V2.

It a job though and Javier approaches it as one. “It’s a cycle and that’s it. We release an album, tour it round the world, finish, have a few weeks off then get back in the studio again. We’re band. We’ve released a record every two years, basically. That’s who we are. That’s what we do. It’s great but it’s a difficult. It’s not like we finish work at 6pm or 7pm and go home. On the other hand we get to travel the world, doing what we love the most. It’s a fair deal.”

Stereophonics have been there, now they’ve come back, again.