From the high-octane drumming and blazing syncopated riffs that rain down on “What’s It Feel Like to Be a Ghost”—the opening track on Taking Back Sunday’s latest CD Louder Now—it’s clear that the album’s title couldn’t be more fitting. Faster, darker and harder than its 2004 predecessor, the best-selling Where You Want To Be – Louder Now is the album that bottles the lightning that this powerful, melodic hardcore band generates whenever they hit the stage.

“We love our first two albums [Where You Want To Be and the 2002 debut Tell All Your Friends], but we were always told that our live show had more energy than the records,” says guitarist-vocalist Fred Mascherino. “Our intention with Louder Now was to capture that energy. Keeping that in mind the whole time we made our record, we got some really intense results.” “It’s the record we have always wanted to make,” declares lead singer Adam Lazzara. “We brought in every element from every influence we’ve ever had. It completes the spectrum.”

Louder Now’s intensity was propelled by producer Eric Valentine (Queens Of The Stone Age, Third Eye Blind) pushing Taking Back Sunday to be better at every turn. “Eric brings to the table the rare ability to take a band that’s been playing for years to an entirely higher level,” says Mascherino. “He is a master of his craft,” adds Lazzara. “He hears and sees things that are nearly impossible to notice being so close to the songs. He pushed us to edge of our abilities and then a little further.” The band members knew they wanted to musically exceed their previous tracks, which were filled with pop-tinged hardcore anthems. “It was important to us when recording Louder Now that we give fans a full listening experience.” Mascherino says. “One of the ways we tried to accomplish that was to experiment with new and different sounds for songs.”

One example is the rollicking “Miami.” The drum kit was set up in the smallest room in the studio, giving Mark O’Connell’s drumming a tight ’80s sound, complementing Matt Rubano’s basslines and further topped with Cure-like guitar tones, and a scorching guitar solo. The end result is unlike anything the band has recorded to date.

The album’s first single “MakeDamnSure” relies on classic Taking Back Sunday Influence, with singer Adam Lazzara’s yowling vocals mixed with Eddie Reyes’ and Mascherino’s slashing guitars. The twin guitar assault and emotional point/counterpoint lyrics are still the lynchpin of their sound. The lyrics illuminate Louder Now’s overall themes of discontent and uncertainty. “A good example is ‘What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?’” mentions Lazzara. “It touches on feeling like an apparition no matter what it is I try or do or where I find myself at any given moment. Simply being withdrawn to the point where the line between what is and is not real gets blurred. The album is about struggling to figure out where the hell we all fit in,” he adds. “It’s like a pre pre-midlife crisis.”

After releasing Where You Want To Be, the band played around “a bazillion” shows, by Mascherino’s reckoning (“You seriously forget your address and home phone number”), including the 2004 Warped Tour, British rock festivals Reading and Leeds, and a sold-out headlining tour. Things did not let up in 2005 when they did a co-headlining arena tour of North America with Jimmy Eat World and performed two sold-out shows in June at Britain’s Milton Keynes National Bowl with Green Day, each band playing to the biggest audiences of their careers.

Continuously inspired during life on the road, Taking Back Sunday wrote and recorded pieces of songs with gear stored on the bus. “It can be damaging to live like this—being away from home,” Mascherino admits. “The space and distance affects us so much it even seeps into the music. I feel like Louder Now is a much darker record than Where You Want to Be, especially on tracks like “Liar (It Takes One to Know One).” The overall tone, mood, and lyrics give you a deeper feeling.” But Lazzara has come to feel more at home on the road. “It’s when I’m home that I start to feel like a stranger in my own skin,” he says, adding “but it’s worth it. Being able to put out records period, is a dream come true. ”

The relentless touring paid off with sold-out arena tours and delirious fan support. Combined, Tell All Your Friends and Where You Want to Be have scanned more than 1.4 million copies and the latter debuted at Number Three on the Billboard Top 200, selling more than 163,000 copies its first week of release in July 2004. It has sold over 700,000 copies to date. Effusive praise in Rolling Stone, Spin, and Entertainment Weekly soon followed, and Taking Back Sunday appeared on the cover of Alternative Press for the third time.

They remained a staple on both MTV and Fuse; and in 2005, the band was tapped to record a theme song for Reed Richards, the lead character for the video game and hit movie Fantastic Four. “Error Operator” appears in the game, on the film’s soundtrack and a revamped version is also on Louder Now.

Determined to get their new album right, “we set out to create something that we considered timeless,” says Mascherino. “We didn’t want something that people would listen to in 10 years and say, ‘That’s from 2006 when all the records sounded like that.’ We wanted people to listen to it in 10 years and say, ‘Hell, yeah, turn that up!’”