"I think we're going to need one," he laughs heartily. "Is it big enough? That's the question."

For more than two decades, the internationally- respected Oils have made no secret of their social conscience with a message of racial tolerance and a healthy, nuclear- free global environment. Circumstances in Australia over the last year or so have sharpened that focus to an edge not seen since their white heat beginnings in the late '70s.

Despite that position, the title of the band's long- awaited incendiary new album, Redneck Wonderland, is anything but a timely marketing ploy. The album was released in Australia on Tuesday (July 6) on Sony Australia, and is due in the U.K. on Sony U.K. Aug. 3. A U.S. release date has not been scheduled yet, and Columbia Records says they don't even know if the album will be released on the label at all.

"I think you'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to realize that something's afoot," says Garrett about his country's lean towards conservatism. "It's the crawling backwards to a safe past that never existed, where you characterize people and just get mean. To vote for someone whose two main platforms are to rearm the population and get rid of what limited rights Aboriginal people have is really sending the country to a place where I don't think most Australians want it to be in the 21st Century."

For that reason, the album, which was produced by Magoo and Warne Livesey -- who steered the Oils' Diesel and Dust and Blue Sky Mining efforts -- and the band themselves, is more closely aligned to national issues than the international perspectives of some past recordings.

"It's really locally- driven in terms of content, except that maybe there's a sub plot going on," says Garrett. "In each place there's young people and other people who want to see a basic maturing of humanity to the extent where you don't blame and castigate people because their eyes point in a different direction. I think that's a really strong theme to the record."

Much of the musical thrust of the album is framed in the title track, which is part state- of- the- art musical technology and part traditional guitar thunder- and- lightning. It's a completely different musical approach to the relative serenity of 1996's Breathe.

"Totally," agrees Garrett. "I think whatever we were going to do after it, we were always going to swing to the different points of the compass. We really made up our own minds that we were going to take as many risks with what we were as we possibly could. Heading down the Breathe path for us was actually a really essential thing to do. It was almost like the emotional spring cleaning, then you come back and try something a bit edgier, which is what Redneck is."

That edge also removes much of the sense of space that's long been a part of Midnight Oil's musical makeup. They might be championing the wide open spaces, but the Redneck album is quite claustrophobic. "It's a little dense isn't it?" confirms Garrett. "I think it's less a landscape record and more of an urban reflection record. I think [guitarists] Martin [Rotsey] and Jim [Moginie] in particular were driving this guitar sound through each of the tracks, even if they weren't guitars. "I'd been across to Europe at the end of last year and heard what was happening in Germany and places like that and heard how hard and tough the sounds were getting," Garrett continues. "I think for us it was a case of, 'Do we stay where we are or do we move?' And we knew we had to move."

The irony is that the Oils have returned to their blast- furnace ways at a time when they would like more than ever for their words to be digested and understood. "I don't think you can have this sort of content in a placid form," reasons Garrett. "We have always recognized that there are going to be complexities in the way people come onto the band."

From Rocktropolis Allstars, by Murray Engleheart

(Note: this article has not been approved for reproduction.)