Extreme, made over

Members of Extreme - (from left) Pat Badger, Gary Cherone, Kevin Figueiredo, and Nuno Bettencourt - rehearsing recently for their upcoming tour. (Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff)

TEWKSBURY - Tucked into a nondescript building at the end of an unassuming dirt road off Main Street, past a rural tableau of dilapidated barns and highway farm stands, one of the biggest-selling rock bands of the 1990s is limbering up.

"Well, that's all right, mama, that's all right for you," Gary Cherone sings as he loosens his lungs to the opening lines of Elvis Presley's rockabilly-flavored oldie. "That's all right mama, just any way you do."

Standing in the middle of a plushly carpeted rehearsal room, the once and future frontman for Extreme is dressed in a tight black T-shirt and black cargo pants, his short hair dyed gold. He's about to turn 47, yet he's still sinewy and absurdly lean some 23 years after his band first began playing dive bars in Somerville and Allston.

A few feet away, Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, nursing a fever but still looking every inch the darkly cool rock star, plugs his electric guitar into a shoulder-high Marshall amplifier and begins adjusting knobs and levels.

The occasion for this meeting of Boston's onetime glam-metal gods is "Saudades de Rock" (pronounced "sow-dodge"), Extreme's first album of new material in 13 years. It's both the basis and rationale for a full-blown US and European tour that gets underway Tuesday in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and hits the Bank of America Pavilion on Thursday.

"It was a matter of when, not if," Cherone says of the reunion. Ask him why, after all these years, the band has decided to come back with a new album and tour, and he breaks into a mischievous grin. "There's two answers," Cherone says. "One: new music - that's answer A. Answer B is money. If you don't like us, you can go with answer B."

Bettencourt, still sleepy-eyed at 3 p.m. after the previous night's flight to Boston from Los Angeles, slices into a nasty chord. From the sound that rips into the room, it appears as if he's decided on his desired amplifier levels: maximum everything. As if summoned by the riff, bassist Pat Badger and new drummer Kevin Figueiredo take up their musical posts.

Individually, the musicians who've gathered as guests in what turns out to be Godsmack's rehearsal space are four guys who grew up cranking Queen, Led Zeppelin, and Aerosmith in Massachusetts towns like Malden, Hudson, and Winchester. Collectively, they comprise one of hard rock and metal's last chart-topping triumphs before Nirvana and grunge made them, and everybody else, instantly obsolete.

"We were never the cool band to like," recalls Bettencourt. "They tried to put us into a hair-metal thing, but we weren't really Warrant or Poison. We were always outside the box. I think we had a little niche that nobody had - maybe the funkiness had something to do with it."

"Our goal was never to just play little clubs," adds Cherone. "Our heroes were the Queens and the Zeppelins. That was our aspiration. Whether we were ever gonna get there or not, that's how we treated the shows."

During its original 1985-'95 run - Extreme's self-titled debut on A&M wouldn't arrive until 1989 - the band toured year in and year out, eventually finding and building a global audience. The group charted two top 10 albums (1990's "Pornograffitti" and 1992's "III Sides to Every Story") and scored a No. 1 gold single in '91 with the acoustic ballad "More Than Words." They quickly followed that up with the similarly acoustic "Hole Hearted," which went to No. 4. Still, Bettencourt sees this reunion as something of a second chance.

"You believe that you're going to be forever young," says Bettencourt, 41. "The whole time we were touring and playing together, we never stopped to smell the flowers, and I think it contributed to a lot of confusion. We got burnt out psychologically and physically." When Extreme called it quits in 1996, Bettencourt says, the aftermath felt like going through "detox."

Other bands and other solo projects came and went. The most famous post-Extreme endeavor - make that infamous in some circles - was Cherone's three-year stint with Van Halen from 1996 to 1999. The powerhouse singer was the iconic hard-rock outfit's third frontman after David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar, and arguably its least popular. In retrospect, Cherone agrees that stepping into that role was a no-win nightmare masquerading as a can't-miss dream.

"Every day was surreal," recalls Cherone. "But the hard part was when I felt good singing and some of the fans on tour, the whole night, were like this" - he thrusts both arms up and curls his fingers in an obscene gesture. "It wasn't to me - well, it was to me - but it was those fans showing loyalty to Dave or Sammy. I knew that, but still, to see it . . ." Cherone's voice trails off. "I talked to Sammy about it, and he said, 'That's nothing. I've been getting that for 12 years.' And he's still gettin' it!' "

Amid the ups and downs, Cherone and Bettencourt never lost touch. There were even occasional Extreme one-off reunion gigs around Boston in 2004 and 2006 (the latter date featured original drummer Paul Geary, who had left the band in 1994 for a career managing acts like Godsmack).

"We did a few shows here and there," Bettencourt says. "But there was this kind of depression, like there was something missing. You feel like an Extreme tribute band almost, because you're playing stuff from a long time ago." Cherone and Bettencourt started writing songs together again, eyeing a new album and, possibly, a new start.

"It had to be about the music, instead of us doing it for nostalgia or finances. We could have toured every year if that was the case," says Bettencourt, who produced "Saudades de Rock," which will be released next month on Open E Records, a label run by New England auto mogul Ernie Boch Jr. The revitalized partnership, and the songs, surpassed anyone's expectations. "I think we always knew Extreme was unfinished business," says bassist Pat Badger.

Enter new drummer Kevin Figueiredo, who had worked with Bettencourt on various band and studio projects in LA. "I definitely had to bring my A game because they're obviously talented musicians and great songwriters," says Figueiredo. "It was a little bit nerve-wracking at first, but once I got familiar with Pat and Gary, it was magical."

In many ways, "Saudades de Rock" bears the stamp of a typical Extreme album - it's robust pop-metal fashioned as much from melody as muscle, hard rock built on the operatic bombast of Queen and the hairpin rhythmic turns of Led Zeppelin. But it's also more raw and more elemental than some of the band's earlier work, stripped back to its four musical essentials.

"You can hear the DNA of the band," Bettencourt says proudly of the mostly live-in-the-studio recording. Cherone simply calls it "the best record we've made." The shows, he promises, will be even better because the stage is where Extreme shines brightest. "It still drives us," Cherone says, "and we have fun."

"It's just that now," adds Bettencourt with a grin, "our bones hurt a lot more."