After a five-year hiatus, alt-rockers Vertical Horizon [ tickets ] are back with a new album, "Burning the Days," and a mixture of in-store performances and club shows to take them through the fall.

The Los Angeles-based band kicks off the return tour tonight (10/26) in Syracuse, NY, followed by a slew of stops along the East Coast through early November. Four free in-store performances at Borders Bookstores are intermingled with 13 shows at clubs and casinos throughout the eastern half of the nation. The current schedule wraps up Nov. 12 in Council Bluffs, IA. Details are below.

"Burning the Days," the band's sixth studio effort, hit shelves late last month on their own label, Outfall Records. The 12-track set marks Vertical Horizon's first collection of new material since 2003's "Go."

"We had some tough times dealings with our record labels toward the end of that relationship," frontman Matt Scannell explained in a recent interview with Associated Press. "You know we had our incredible peak and we had somewhat of a valley ... I kind of needed to step back and reconnect with the reason why I was doing this in the first place."

Scannell rounded up founding member/guitarist Keith Kane, bassist Sean Hurley and drummer Ron Lavella to work on the latest album, which features Rush drummer Neil Peart and songwriter Richard Marx. The band recorded the set over the course of two years at Scannell's own studio.

Vertical Horizon, which first formed in 1991, took mainstream radio by storm in 1999 with the group's fourth album, "Everything You Want." The title track landed at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 and became one of the most played singles of 2000, while the album itself sold nearly two million copies.