Carl Bell isn't happy. Right now, the Fuel guitarist and songwriter would like nothing more that a Mars bar, his sustenance of choice when he was locked away in his home working on the band's new album.

But the candy manufacturer has replaced the product with the Snickers Almond bar, and it's just not the same. "I was so pissed when I found out they discontinued the Mars bar," Bell fumed. "I had to load a whole bunch from Canada and sneak them across the border."

"No wonder those drug dogs were sniffing your bag," joked bassist Jeff Abercrombie.

But the discontinuation of a candy bar is about all that Fuel have to complain about these days. They've just released Natural Selection, and the disc's first single, "Falls on Me," is faring well at radio, leading to strong first-week album sales. Fuel are especially relieved by the reaction because they've been out of commission for more than a year while they replaced their legal and management team.

"It's a major concern to be off the radar as long as we have been," singer Brett Scallions said. "We were just completely removed from everything, and that was hard."

"We're just hoping we can take over where we left off and become a badder, stronger entity," Abercrombie added.

Natural Selection, which was produced by Michael Beinhorn (Hole, Marilyn Manson), is rife with hooks and varies in tone from the minor-key grunge-lite bite of "Quarter" to the yearning Live-esque rock of "Die Like This" to the cigarette-lighter-in-the-air balladry of "These Things."

The band named the record after the Darwinian principle that the strong will survive and the weak will perish. "This album was evolution for us," Bell said. "It has connotations back to survival of the fittest and all those clichés. But it's true. A lot of the bands that were around when we started are gone now. And this industry is so here-today-gone-later-that-day that it's a tough business to stick around in."

For now, "Falls on Me" is sticking in enough listeners' heads to keep Fuel relevant. The love song starts with delicate atmospheric arpeggio before shifting into a radio rocker. Bell, who wrote the tune while locked away in his house for six months working on the album, said it was inspired by many of his angst-ridden peers.

"You hear so many bands saying, 'Mommy did this' or 'Daddy did that' and 'Life's so unfair,' " Bell said. "I'm so sick of that. I mean, you've got more than one dimension, dude. Explore it."

Even though it doesn't address traditional family trauma, "Falls on Me" is still laden with tension, addressing the difficulty of remaining monogamous even when you're with someone you love.

"Everybody is hardwired to have some wanderlust in them," Bell said. "I think maybe males are a little more wired to want to wander than females. I mean, you don't see too many male brothels. But that song comes from having a relationship and trying to honor it and not mess up something beautiful."