After spending most of the year on the road, the guys in Chevelle are looking forward to a well-deserved island vacation.

But before that, they’ll be hammering out their muscular Midwestern hard rock tomorrow night, like they did with success a week or so ago at the Carnival of Madness summer tour, sharing the bill with other rockin’ stalwarts like Puddle of Mudd and Sevendust.

Drummer Sam Loeffler has participated in his fair share of interviews while on the road with his guitarist-singer brother Pete and bassist Dean Bernardini, but when he called up last week, he sounded eager to introduce Chevelle to an audience seeing them for the first time in Hawaii.

The band also is looking ahead to a 20th anniversary celebration — a special two-night-stand at the Metro in their home city, Chicago, where they first got their start. The concerts will be recorded for a future DVD.

Hitting the national spotlight in 2002 with the song "The Red," the band has forged ahead at a steady pace, coming up with the occasional fan favorite song like "The Clincher," "Send the Pain Below," "Vitamin R (Leading Us Along)."

Three singles have been released from their last album, 2009’s "Sci-Fi Crimes": "Jars," "Letters From a Thief" and "Shameful Metaphors" — the last soon to be a video.

"The Red" helped make Chevelle’s sophomore release "Wonder What’s Next" a platinum seller in ’03; they toured with Chris Cornell/Rage Against the Machine recombinant Audioslave that year.

"We’ve known lots of other bands who had more success earlier on that aren’t around anymore," Loeffler said. "So, without a doubt, we’re thankful that we’re still here, and have had a full career."

CHEVELLE’S recorded sound has evolved over the years, from "The Red," with its highly engineered approach to "Sci-Fi Crimes," which has a more natural feel.

"We intended to go for a warmer feel on ‘Sci-Fi Crimes,’" Loeffler said. "We got tired of rock records pretty much sounding the same — processed, over-produced and Auto-Tuning the crap out of it. I mean, why sign a band if your lead guy can’t even sing? We knew the sound was going to be different on this album, and I admit there was a chance people wouldn’t like what they heard, but because our guy Brian Virtue both produced and mixed the album, we knew we would end up with something that at least we liked."

The backbone has always been solid, mainstream guitar rock, with vocalist Pete Loeffler’s yearning vocals in the forefront.

There’s a consistent, unpretentious approach to the music that grabs fans. Loeffler said, "I take that as a compliment, because music, at the end of the day, has to be something you love to play. … We don’t have tons of unreleased songs, because we figure that if it didn’t work then, it’s best to move on to work on music you believe in."

Now, Chevelle is at a stage when members want a document of their current success — hence their "Shameful Metaphors" video, incorporating Dallas concert footage and the upcoming Halloween stint in Chicago.

Chevelle also is one of the rare bands that enjoys a solid working relationship with a major record label, in this case Epic.

"Even though we’ve gone through four label presidents during the four records we’ve done for them, the current regime is very supportive, and we’ve always had a great relationship with the promotions people. I feel that Epic considers us, as a whole, their band because they’ve been really good to us. They’ve rolled with the punches in terms of accommodating the specific way we write and work, which is unusual nowadays," Loeffler said.

And in this age of instant information, Loeffler said the band tries to maintain some degree of anticipatory mystery about its next move and members try to avoid getting too comfortable.

"We believe in the old adage that nothing good comes from fame," Loeffler said.