Long Island screamo dudes Taking Back Sunday spent the fall in Los Angeles, recording the follow-up to 2004's hit Where You Want to Be. Their major-label debut, Louder Now, brings more of the aggression that made their name. But this time around they have the luxury of a tricked-out studio and top-notch producer, Eric Valentine (Good Charlotte, Queen of the Stone Age).

"It's kind of like taking a seven-year-old kid and putting him in Toys 'R' Us," frontman Adam Lazzara says of recording the album, slated for a possible spring release. "It gave us a chance to have more than two guitar sounds on a record. We took a painstakingly long time. I'd drop by the studio, and some of the things coming out -- I'm like, 'This is us? This is our band?' I love it."

Among the group's favorite tracks thus far are the "laidback" "My Blue Heaven" and "Liar, Liar," a song Lazzara describes as "110 miles-per-hour, very hard to play and totally rocking." "Sleep" is "the closest thing we could get to that Motown kind of bass sound," while the rocker "Miami" brings some "real ear-orgasms!"

Wary that all the California sunshine would take the edge off their sound, Lazarra says the band told Valentine, "Look, if this comes out sounding squeaky clean, we're gonna sick dogs on you."