The album, released on Roadrunner Records midway through last year, tells the haunting story of technology's effect on the malaise of today's youth, more concerned with X-Box and the internet than social interaction. It received its fair share of acclaim, being named Classic Rock magazine's album of 2007 and receiving a nomination for Best Surround Sound Album at the Grammys.

More importantly, though, it cements Porcupine Tree's place at the top of the heap of "nu-prog", a collection of bands that combine complex compositions in the progressive rock tradition, but with a "21st century, modern, post-Radiohead approach", as guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Steven Wilson describes it.

But it hasn't always been awards and worldwide tours for Porcupine Tree. Normally, it wouldn't take 15 years for a band to tour Australia, but Porcupine Tree spent the better part of a decade in absolute obscurity, releasing albums that are not only challenging to listen to but also to find. Until their 2001 breakthrough In Absentia, their material wasn't even available in Australia, and even then it was difficult to locate any store that would stock it.

However, in the years since the success of In Absentia, Porcupine Tree have found themselves in the possession of a sizeable fan base primarily through word-of-mouth, which has allowed them greater scope to release their music. Fear Of A Blank Planet was released on Roadrunner Records, home to Opeth and Dream Theater, which has meant their reach is greater than ever before.

"We and Dream Theater were both on the same label [before Roadrunner], which was Warner Bros, and it's fascinating to discover that actually leaving a major label and signing to an independent, albeit a very big independent like Roadrunner, will actually take your profile higher.

"It's really quite sad in a way for the major labels like Warner. I just don't think a label like Warner really understands the power of the fan base. They're so used to dealing with the entertainment end of the industry and the media, things like MTV, that they just don't understand this concept of fan power and street teams, and I think for bands like Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater and Opeth, those things are the lifeblood.

"Labels like Warner Bros will never understand that, and that's why I think they're all going to go down, because with download culture kicking in now, nobody really wants to pay for Britney Spears albums or Mariah Carey albums any more, but people will always want to buy Opeth records and Dream Theater records and Porcupine Tree records, because they know they're buying into something special."

And that fan base has also finally made it possible for the band to embark on their first ever tour of Australia, at the tail-end of the Tour Of A Blank Planet. With a new album to promote the setlist should be packed with more recent tunes, but he hasn't forgotten the old-school fans either.

"I'm getting the impression that a lot of people will have heard about the band for the first time in more recent years, so the emphasis probably will be on the new album or the more recent work, but we are also aware that wherever we go we have people that have been with us since the beginning back in the mid-90s and will probably expect to hear some of the older material too. So we'll try and create a good balance for people hearing it for the first time."

And Wilson assures us that they won't be skimping on any aspect of the show, with Danish filmmaker Lasse Hoille's twisted creations - he has worked on Porcupine Tree's album artwork since In Absentia - being beamed to a big screen at the back of the stage.

"Porcupine Tree have developed quite a complex multimedia aspect to the show. Although we're a rock band and we can rock at times, we also have more visual elements to the show than a lot of bands. We have films for all of the songs on the new record, so there are times during the show when the emphasis is very much on the projections, the movies, as opposed to the performance aspect. And we like to create a nice balance between that so there is a sense of musical journey and visual journey too throughout the show, so that it has a nice flow to it.

"Certainly when you come to a Porcupine Tree show you don't just get four guys standing up there belting out their latest album. It is conceived very much as an audio visual experience."

OzProg is currently running a competition in which you could win a double pass to see Porcupine Tree in your city. Check out www.ozprog.com/ptcomp for more details and instructions on how to enter.

Porcupine Tree's Australian tour will take in the following cities:

April 25th - The Palace Theatre, Melbourne
Tickets from Ticketek (132 849) and Missing Link.

April 26th - The Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Tickets from Ticketek (132 849).

April 27th - The Tivoli Theatre, Brisbane
Tickets from Ticketek (132 849), Rockinghorse, Music Mania and Kill The Music.

Wiew the complete transcript of our conversation with Steven Wilson here.