The Monkeywrench is known more for its parts than its sum.

If you've never heard the band before, you might recognize its members.

The Seattle-based supergroup is playing its first show outside the U.S. Sunday at the Starfish Room. It's led by singer/guitarist Mark Arm and his Mudhoney bandmate Steve Turner on bass. Gas Huffer guitarist Tom Price, Lubricated Goat drummer Martin Bland and Texas guitarist Tim Kerr round out the lineup.

"We'll be destroying the mystique of the band wholeheartedly this month," said Arm during a recent interview in Seattle. "Any illusions people had will be shattered."

Monkeywrench isn't a new band. It began almost a decade ago when Arm and Turner met Kerr, a veteran of the band Poison 13, in Texas. The trio enlisted Gas Huffer's Tom Price and drummer Martin Bland, who moved to Seattle from Australia, to record some Poison 13 tracks under the Monkeywrench moniker. Clean As A Broke Dick Dog, the band's first album was released by Sub Pop in [1992], but no tour followed for the bluesy punks. Just a trio of one-off shows. Last spring the quintet reunited for a six-song set at Bellingham's Garageshock festival.

By autumn, Mudhoney's bassist Matt Lukin had left that band. Arm and Turner kept their creative juices running by booking studio time for the Monkeywrench. The psychedelic sophomore effort, Electric Children, was released on Bellingham's Estrus Records earlier this month.

Two weeks after the Vancouver show, the Monkeywrench will play its biggest show yet at London, England's Wembley Arena in support of Pearl Jam. Arm and Turner have played around the world with Pearl Jam and may do so again as Mudhoney.

Arm said Lukin told him he could've left earlier but wanted to stay around to prevent the 12-year-old band from breaking up. "He didn't want to let the rest of us down, he also said go ahead and get somebody else and keep it going as Mudhoney and I won't get pissed off." Lukin, Arm said, simply lost interest and is now working as a carpenter.

"You shouldn't really keep playing music if you don't want to. That definitely is true," said Turner.

"If you don't want to you probably shouldn't," added Arm. "And sometimes even if you do want to, you probably shouldn't."

Mudhoney is now a trio with Turner picking up bass duties.

Said Arm: "There's this guy that works at the bass store, he's got this hot five string bass and he says he's willing to play with us."

"Radical!" says Turner.

Arm, Turner and Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters spent two days in the studio on Easter weekend with producer Jack Endino and Wayne Kramer, who played guitar for the legendary MC5. One of the three new Mudhoney tunes, "Inside Job," is available as an MP3 file at musicblitz.com. Kramer played bass on the sessions, which saw the birth of a song called "The Straight Life" and an untitled instrumental track.

Mudhoney fans who want a taste of the past can pick up March to Fuzz, a double-disc, best-of compilation released on Sub Pop earlier this year. It's hitting shelves in mid-May through Warner Canada.

"It's at least the headstone for the Lukin years, if not the whole damn thing," Turner jokes. "We've been talking about doing a rarities thing forever and then Sub Pop told us they were going to do a best of thing of just their stuff so we quickly combined the two things together. It worked great. Most bands wouldn't have been able to do a career retrospective like that so easily."