Danko Jones opens for Nickelback at the ACC tomorrow.

Sleep Is The Enemy is the title of Danko Jones' new album -- and the band certainly takes that sentiment to heart. Over the past few years they have spent more time on the road than off, travelling the globe repeatedly in support of their last album, We Sweat Blood. As well, frontman Danko Jones did his own spoken-word album and tour.

After a brief Christmas break, they joined Nickelback's Canadian tour -- which brings them to the ACC tomorrow -- in the middle of which Jones managed to record three months' worth of his radio show, The Wonderful World Of Rock. Somewhere, somehow they found time to record Sleep Is The Enemy with producer Matt De Matteo. Oh yes, and they also broke in a new drummer, a replacement for longtime pounder Damon Richardson.

Once the Nickelback tour winds up, the band will be off to introduce their new album to Europe. No wonder we rarely get to see them anymore -- but Jones wouldn't have it any other way.

"It's all fun stuff," he said over the phone last week. "I don't go to bars and I'm not into sports, so this is where the time goes."

Sleep Is The Enemy is full of the band's familiar sweaty, powerful riffs and pounding rhythms, but there's more going on musically than before, and I'm not just talking about the guest spot from Kyuss singer John Garcia.

"We spent more time working them, kneading them, this time," said Jones. "We did 10 songs and thought we were pretty much done. Then we listened to them and realized they weren't really finished at all, so we went back in and started from scratch on nine of the 10 songs. The only one we kept was the John Garcia track."

The band has been blowing audiences away with their hyper-intense, high-powered live shows for a decade, but were virtually ignored by the Canadian music industry and headed for Europe, where they were embraced as rock stars. Now the trio -- Jones, bassist JC and new drummer Dan Cornelius, formerly of Damn 13 -- is trying to win over mainstream North American rock fans, with the unexpected help of rock monsters Nickelback.

"It's interesting -- I mean, we've been around for 10 years in Canada, and we're playing in front of people who haven't even heard of us," Jones said. "So it's a needed thing, and a pretty easy tour. The band is treating us well, and their fans have been nice to us. Or if they haven't, it's too big a place for us to hear it!"