Christopher Hall had an epiphany onstage. It was the other night during Stabbing Westward's Boston show, when Mark Eliopulos' guitar cut out for two songs, leaving Hall, the vocalist and self-admitted "hack" guitarist, to fill the aural hole. "I realized, 'we're not an industrial band, we're a rock band,' he observes. "Take away the guitar, and we suck!"

Throughout a career that has encompassed such critically acclaimed discs as Ungod and 1996's gold-selling Wither Blister Burn + Peel, which included the single, "What Do I Have to Do?," no one has accused the band of sucking, though tags ranging from "industrial" to "moody" have been thrust on the Chicago-bred quintet. But Hall, with a desert-dry self-deprecating humor, who calls himself "harshly realistic ... cynical, actually," is quite pleased with Darkest Days, the band's recently released, Dave Jerden (Jane's Addiction)-produced LP. With the help of keyboardist/programmer Walker Flakus, bassist Jim Sellers, drummer/programmer Andy Kubiszewski and Eliopulos, Hall created a near-concept album that's Stabbing Westward's most potent and fully realized work to date. But of course, its launch hasn't been without trials, tribulations and joys, and Hall is happy to tell tales out of school.

The first single and video is for "Save Yourself" [the No. 8 Mainstream Rock track in the country this week] You're also a photographer; did you have visual input for the video?

I didn't have anything to do with it other than insisting the band be in it to a greater degree than we've been in our last videos, which is not very much. We tend to do these high-concept videos that make the actors very famous and we're virtually faceless as we walk down the street. I thought perhaps we would make a video that we were in. And we didn't. [Not being in the video] was a theory that goes hand-in-hand with so-called industrial ... whatever the hell it is. You generally want to have more of a "vibe" than a "face," unless you're Marilyn Manson. When you look like that, you want to be on film, but we don't have anyone in the band who is really freakish.

You mentioned that Mark, the youngest and newest member, is having a blast on tour. How about you?

I'm more serious now. I understand how important what we're doing is to our career, so rather than, 'wow, this is fun, let's have a good time,' it's more like, 'this is a job, let's make sure everything gets done properly.' The only really important thing is the hour and a half on stage ... and the twelve hours that goes into making sure that hour and a half goes as smoothly as possible. I try not to be drunk or hungover at inappropriate times.

As both a rhythm guitarist and photographer, which do you have more of, cameras or guitars?

I'm way more into cameras than guitars. I have an old vintage Jag and a Gretsch, like three Gibsons, but being such a horrible guitar player ... I just play guitar when I can't think of any good choreography to that song. It gives me somewhere to stand. When Mark's guitar broke in Boston, they immediately turned up my guitar, which was a mistake. I tried to play the part, and I realized, 'I don't even play on this part of the song, and I don't even really know the part, so maybe I shouldn't even play.' It was pretty ugly. I had my back to the audience, staring at Mark's amp, seeing if I could psychically will it to come back on. I was forced into uncomfortable banter with the audience, and I announced that I bought a new shirt. How asinine was that? I don't talk between songs. Everything I say I say when I sing. I thought I would tell a joke, but thankfully I was smart enough to edit that idea quickly. Okay, 'here, I'll do some Space Ghost impersonation.' Nah. Everybody in the audience was looking at me, like, 'entertain us, ass boy!'

How serious are you about photography?

I have a gallery opening in August, at the Walnut Street Gallery in Fort Collins, Colorado, in the company of Ron Wood, John Entwistle, Tico Torres from Bon Jovi, and some guy from Los Lobos whose name I can't remember. Tico paints nudes from his New Jersey home. I didn't say that in a mockingly sarcastic way. He just does. I'm showing infrared photography from cemeteries around the country, mostly angels. I did some crowd-surfing shots from this really horribly muddy festival in which people look so joyous to be crowd-surfing and they're smiling and beaming, totally unaware of the fact that their mouth is filled with mud. They're really cool.

Back to music. Now that's it's been done and out for a bit, what kind of perspective do you have on "Darkest Days"?

I haven't listened to it. I've never heard it on CD. The only thing I feel about it is the same thing I feel about all our albums, which makes me mad. I wish we had played the album in front of an audience about fifty times before we recorded it, because I've already started to mutate it, and make things go places they didn't go before. I think a lot of our last record actually sounds better live than it does on the album, but I think the new album ... I still stand by it as being our best.

Do you watch charts and sales, the business of music?

No, it gets distracting. Andy does that a lot. He calls the morning SoundScan comes in, and posts the numbers on the wall. I'm like, "whatever, dude." Who cares? It doesn't reflect anything that we have any control over, so why get neurotic about it? There's nothing we can do that will force people to buy our record. Radio is going to play it or they're not. MTV is going to play it or not. I mean, if a fan brings a friend, our show is hopefully cool enough so they'll buy the record. That's really all we can do, shy of me getting a heroin habit and getting arrested or something ... All we can do is play our ass off every night, and that's not enough to generate a 100,000 record sales in a week, so why fucking worry about it? I actually pay attention to what's going on in the world, and am totally aware that you can be fucking massive on alternative radio one day, and.... There are hundreds of bands who have really big records who aren't there the next time around. You can't expect it to happen automatically. I assumed when we released Darkest Days that we'd be starting from scratch, basically. We have a core fan base, but as far as the rest of the world, they have to be sold all over again.

KATHERINE TURMAN