Theory of a Deadman had a simple but daunting goal for its third album: to make the greatest record possible.

"I always try to remind the guys and myself that there are 20 bands lined up behind us just waiting for a chance to take our place," says frontman Tyler Connolly. "So that means we had to go in there and make a great record." With Scars & Souvenirs, the Vancouver trio has hit its mark.

The balanced 13-track effort is the polished and passionate testament to seven years of hard work, heavy touring and diligent attention to its craft. From the swirling grind of "By the Way" to the nasty snarl of "Crutch" to the soaring melodicism of "Not Meant to Be" and "Wait For Me," Scars & Souvenirs is a broad-reaching endeavor that puts Connolly, guitarist Dave Brenner and bassist Dean Back high in the rock pantheon, achieving creative growth without sacrificing the hard-hitting power that got them here in the first place.

"We really dug hard on this one," Connolly notes. "The longer you're in a band, the more you write songs, the better you get. We've had such a great opportunity to figure out what to do better, how to write a better song and keep building and building. That's exciting for us."

He didn't have to look hard for inspiration. He wrote "Wait For Me," with its acoustic guitar underpinning and rich chorus, for his wife, paying tribute to her fortitude in being home alone while he's on the road. The piano-laden "All or Nothing," meanwhile, chronicles their relationship, which began as a good friendship before blossoming into romance. "It was kind of sick of me writing all these woman-hater songs before," acknowledges Connolly, whose mother left his family when he was in high school, providing rich source material for his earlier work. "People thought I was writing about my wife." While Connolly's lyrics have taken on a kinder, gentler pallor on Scars & Souvenirs, the band continues to keep the knobs cranked to 11.

Connolly also went into Scars & Souvenirs trying to write some songs that were "just for fun," and succeeded with tracks such as "End of Summer," an anthem about the bittersweetness of endings, whether that of a season or a relationship.

But even though the album mines a deeper emotional trough, it charges with the same potent force of its predecessors. When fans eagerly crank up the likes of "So Happy," "Got it Made" and "Bad Girlfriend," they'll end up with a set of blown out speakers, thanks to the firepower that crackles in these rockers, while "Sacrifice" bristles with the kind of primal, super-charged defiance that has long defined the best hard rock.

"A lot of bands, they grow older and they get grayer and they just can't do the rock songs anymore," Connolly says. "I don't see that happening to us. Fans are gonna hear our record and hear some softer stuff, but we're a rock band. I think it sounds bigger than the other two (albums) we've done."

Which is, not surprisingly, why Connolly, Brenner and Back are chomping at the bit to take Scars & Souvenirs out on the road. "We really want to take the band farther this time," Connolly says. "We want to get out there to places we have not been before - where a lot of our fans are --Asia, Australia, as well as reaching our fans in North America and Europe. We're just a hard-working band, man. We want to be out there for a couple of years and play these songs to everybody we possibly can."

With an album like Scars & Souvenirs, the fans will be lining up to listen.