In June of last year, Mudhoney announced that, in the wake of losing its record contract and its bassist, Matt Lukin, the seminal grunge band would be taking a break.

Since then, the band members have worked on various projects, including The Monkeywrench, which features both frontman Mark Arm and guitarist Steve Turner. But now, the remaining three members, including drummer Dan Peters, have reunited to record a new track, "Inside Job," which can be found at musicblitz.com. According to Arm, it isn't a one-off.

"The idea is just to keep going (into the studio) and recording, until we have enough material for an album," he says. "We're going to do it kind of piecemeal, which is something we've never done before." Arm says that more Mudhoney was never in doubt. "We kept talking about doing something, but Steve and I have been busy with Monkeywrench," he says. "I guess the impetus was...MusicBlitz calling. It gave us a reason to go back into the studio."

Working without Lukin, though, makes Mudhoney an entirely different beast, says Arm. "It's a little weird writing songs without a bass player. But sometimes Steve'll play bass, and you have to imagine the lead guitar." On "Inside Job," though, former MC5 member Wayne Kramer is found pounding the bass. "We planned that Steve would play bass on this," says Arm. "It just happened in practice that Wayne Kramer was like, 'Mind if I play bass?' And we all got big smiles and said, 'Sure!'"

The new album is still quite a way off, says Arm ("We haven't even got a bass player yet!"), and the band has yet to even consider distribution options - "We'll cross that bridge later," he says. But Arm says he's pretty sure Mudhoney won't be going back down the major label road. "It's too bureaucratic," he says. "The slick powers of commercial music have tightened their grip on the airwaves again, so if you're not a boy band or some huge hip-hop thing, you aren't going to make a label any money, and they're not interested. We put the Monkeywrench album (Electric Children) out on Estrus. There's, like, three people working there, so everyone knows exactly what's going on. It's not like being Joseph K in The Trial."