God Lives Underwater is a group that could almost easily be explained by the all-too-familiar formula of modern music.

A couple of guys (or gals) from small town USA pick up some instruments, start jamming and get signed to a large record company where they become rock stars and influential cultural icons.

Well, in God Lives Underwater’s case, the guys are Jeff Turzo and David Reilly and the small town is Perkiomenville, Pa. (“Its population is minimal,” Reilly said).

But Turzo and Reilly don’t exactly fit the rest of the modern rock formula. For instance, the two of them put together a record mainly from hardware they bought at Best Buy.

This record is the recently released “Life in the So-Called Space Age,” and the hardware the group used is Pro Tools. The group also took a nontraditional approach creating a new CD.

“We mainly mixed and matched material,” Reilly said. “We would record several versions of the same songs, and we would listen to each version and pick parts of each that we liked. Then these elements would get tossed together.

“But along the way,” he continued, “things got really screwed up. We would always start out with bare bones material, mostly just vocals and guitar, and build it up by layering stuff onto it with computers. The problems arose when we discovered that we no longer had clean versions of just the demo vocals and guitar because all of the originals had stuff layered on top of them.

“Because of our lack of organizational skills,” he finished, “we ended up losing a lot of things that we liked because we had depleted the multi-tracks on them and couldn’t change how they sounded. So, we’d have to start all over again, and we’d try to save all of the performances and the vocals, and it would all get screwed up again. But it was a cool way to work because it made us think differently.”

Despite all of the computer hassles the group had in completing “My Life in the So-Called Space Age,” Reilly insisted that he actually likes using them to create music.

“It’s fun to use computers to make music,” he explained. “It enhances what we can do, and it certainly makes things easier, most of the time. I like the way that computers allow people to create music at home. And it’s amazing that the music sounds as good as it does considering how little money it takes to create music on computers.”

Reilly also pointed out that computers allow people to take drastically different approaches to create music, and they also allow people to create vastly different sounds. It is because of this large spectrum of possibilities that such different sounding techno groups as Tricky, Atari Teenage Riot and Moby can coexist while using the same hardware.

Yet, Reilly said he doesn’t really keep a close eye on how other people are using the technology. He’s more concerned with what his group can do with the technology that is innovative and creative.

“I’ve never felt pressured to keep up with what’s going on in the various techno scenes,” Reilly, whose personal favorite musical artists include Ween, Spiritualized, Radiohead, David Bowie and Meat Beat Manifesto (“they are the forefathers of a lot of the music that is going on today,” he espoused, “and don’t get enough credit for what they have done”).

“There are, however, some newer techno records that I like a lot,” he added, “such as Crystal Method’s ‘Vegas.’ That’s an amazing sounding record. But I don’t really care for much drum-and-bass stuff. And, actually, I don’t really care much for most techno.”

But this didn’t stop Reilly and Turzo from creating a new CD that could easily be categorized as techno. Reilly, however, points out that this description isn’t nearly as easy as it may seem.

“We’re a rock band,” he explained, “whether there’s guitar on it or not. If you took away our lyrics and electronic melodies, the songs could still be performed on guitar or piano. So, who’s to say that we are techno. That’s not the label I’d put on our music. But then again, I don’t know what to call our music, either.”

The group’s 1995 debut album, “Empty,” sold really well (partly helped by the group’s contribution of “No More Love” to the movie “Johnny Mnemonic”), as did the group’s self-titled EP, which was also released in 1995.

The group shows no signs of slowing down. Both Reilly and Turzo are working on side-projects (Reilly’s is Robot Teen America and Turzo’s is Mass Hystereo). The group’s first single from “Life In The So-Called Space Age,” “From Your Mouth,” was being played on radio stations (like Los Angeles’ KROQ) before the group’s label, 1500/A&M, officially released and authorized radio stations to use it.

The group has been nationally touring for the last several years with groups like Lords of Acid, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, KMFDM, Spacehog, Filter and Korn. It has even managed to get a video placed on MTV’s rotation.

“I can hardly find music on that channel anymore,” Reilly complained. “I like M2 and I wish it could be seen everywhere. But a lot of places don’t get M2, unfortunately.”

If those places did, they would be treated to a “very cool” video for “From Your Mouth” which was directed by Roman Coppola.

“It features this Japanese kid eating food,” Reilly said, “but there’s a catch. This kid holds the world’s record for eating the most food. So, we show him eating all of this food, except that we have it coming out of his mouth backwards. It’s really, really odd. I’m sure people will really dig it.”

As for God Lives Underwater’s future, well, only God knows for certain. Reilly, however, only knows a few specifics.

“We will be touring for the remainder of the year in the United States and Europe,” he said. “Every leg of the tour is going to be different, and each leg lasts about eight weeks. There are lots of things that we’d like to do on this tour, both musically and visually, but we’re kind of going about it gradually.”

The group will also be releasing another single, “Rearrange,” and a video to support it.

The group also recorded a cover version of Depeche Mode’s “Fly On The Windscreen,” which is available only on the Depeche Mode tribute album, “For The Masses.”