Stereophonics are a tough trio to crack.

Since they emerged out of Wales at the tail-end of Britpop in the mid Nineties, they have been hissed and booed at by the music press and generally dismissed as bland Britrock guff.

Their dreary karaoke cover of Rod Stewart's Handbags And Gladrags seemed to confirm many listeners' worst fears that gravelly-voiced frontman Kelly Jones actually did want to sound like Rod Stewart.

Could a band be any more predictable or any less cool?

Probably not. And yet the Stereophonics have refused to buckle under the weight of a relentless barrage of criticism.

The band's endurance clearly has something to do with their huge and loyal fan base. Over the last nine years, they have sold more than seven million records, had four successive number one albums, achieved 11 top five singles and a number one single and toured the world several times over. With hits like Local Boy In The Photograph, Have A Nice Day and A Thousand Trees, they are one of Britain's biggest-selling bands.

They have always been more concerned with getting on with the job than being on side with NME. This was made plain in 2001's hit Mr Writer, which features the lyrics "Are you so lonely?/Don't even know me/But you'd like to stone me/Mr Writer, why don't you tell it like it really is?"

"Rock 'n' roll is nothing to do with the charts," says Kelly.

"It's nothing to do with celebrity. Nothing to do with industry.

"As far as the press goes you get most of the attention from your first two records anyway. That's when they put you on the front cover. That's when they try to hail you and that's when they try to break you. "Then after that you've just got to keep your head down and keep going forward really.

You're going to gain fans and lose fans along the way by just being true to what you do musically. That's just the way it is."

This sturdy defiance in the face of music press persecution has finally paid off. With the addition of new Argentinian drummer, Javier Weyler (former drummer and founder member Stuart Cable was controversially sacked in 2003 over "commitment issues") and an acclaimed new album, Language. Sex. Violence. Other? Stereophonics are riding high - for once finding favour with both fans and critics.

Dakota, the uplifting first single to be released from the album, had shocked critics spitting out praise.

"What went right?" The Guardian asked.

Kerrang! said the album revealed "a newfound sense of groove - a dark, sleazy edge that shows off a whole new side the band", while Q said: "The riffs are back. The vocals have snap and bite. It starts with menace brooding, mysterious and sexy."

"We've had such a good, positive reaction to this album so far, critically and industry-wise, which we hadn't had for a while," says Kelly. But he still seems to know which side his bread is buttered. "I'd f****** hate it if the critics like it and the fans didn't," he laughs.

But the fans do like it. The record is the band's fourth No. 1 album in the UK, achieving platinum status just one week after its release in March. Dakota shot to number one. And warming up for their first UK tour in two years, Stereophonics' gig at The Brighton Dome is sure to be a sell-out. The box office received 2,000 calls in the first hour that the tickets went on sale.

However, we've just heard the band have released some more tickets so you might snap up a great seat if you call now.

Language. Sex. Violence. Other? may be the group's fifth album, but they seem to view it with the excitement of a debut record. "This band is so positive right now,' says Kelly. "We've made the most exciting record we possibly could.

"It can quite easily get to a Greatest Hits' set round about this time in a band's career. We are well aware of that and we don't want to do it.

"We want to show people how good our catalogue of music is but we still want to make it exciting, edgy and unpredictable. That's the challenge to us. To keep it relevant.

"We didn't want to make a record that was over 45 minutes long. We wanted something that when it finished you wanted to listen to it again. We wanted it to be high energy from beginning to end.

"The motto was: Don't think, just draw.' Try this, try that and then listen back after. By doing that you're not frightened of going for it." All the songs on the album are one word titles. Doorman, Superman, Lolita, Deadhead. The album title is equally categoric - or some might say, prosaic. With Stereophonics, what you see is what you get, and it is precisely this down-to-earth, straightforward honesty which has given them mass appeal.

"We just liked the fact that the song titles were very, very snappy," Kelly says. "We initially wanted to have a one word album title like Jeep - or Pump by Aerosmith."

"We couldn't find one, so when we stumbled across Language. Sex. Violence. Other? on a classification chart on a DVD case. That kind of felt right because it was four individual words. And I quite liked the play on words in the title.

"It sort of asks the question: Is that it?' Are people only interested in language, sex and violence - or is there something else? It just had multiple meanings, whether it was body language, bad language, foreign language - or sex. Male or female sex.

"It just had all these ways you could read it, and I've always liked that in titles."

Apparently not so straightforward after all. The new album, with this hint of ambiguity, signals a new direction for the band and a new lease of life. Losing Stuart and gaining Javier seems key.

"Javier is a guy the band have known for over three years," Kelly says. "He's got a great attitude and energy for life.

"Playing music together felt very natural. So when we went to make the album we called him up."

"It felt like we were teenagers again," adds bass player Richard Jones. "When we recorded the first couple of tracks in July, we knew Javier was the one. We gelled really well. He has bought a different feel to the band. He's got a great style of playing and brilliant energy."

And how does it feel for Javier to have joined one of the biggest bands in the UK? "You could say I'm having the time of my life," he laughs.