Paramore try to hit reset on the evocative Brand New Eyes

For all the good vibes that the young members of pop-punk phenoms Paramore dished out with their wildly successful multi-platinum album Riot! (2007), their downtime should have been spent sipping frappuccinos poolside in some swank hotel. The reality was more like Metallica's therapy throwdown Some Kind of Monster—band members fought, seethed and threatened to walk away entirely. And then Gwen Stefani had to go and fan the flames even further. "We thought we had all this time off," says bassist Jeremy Davis, "but No Doubt asked us to be on tour with them for the whole summer, so we were like, We can't really turn that down."

When Paramore finally got into the studio in Nashville, friction was imminent. "We were super-stressed and we were bumping against each other," says Davis with a harried sigh. To finish the writing and recording, the band then went to Los Angeles, where they moved in together and were forced to confront each other. "At the beginning of the record, I was in a weird mood, still kinda angry at some of these people for how they've treated me," admits Davis. "But we were all sharing cars, and sharing the house, and after everything was on the table and we just talked about it, from then on everything was just building."

The process of hashing out their differences while maintaining a unified front is the driving force behind Brand New Eyes, Paramore's most aggressive, gloriously cranky and insatiable album to date. "It was really us relearning each other," says Davis. "A lot of our songs are about us, like, learning how to relate to other members of the band. Everyone's growing up and they're growing up differently." It took time for Davis, singer Hayley Williams, guitarists Josh Farro and Taylor York, and drummer Zac Farro to work out their growing pains and realize they're still the same group of friends that used to hang out at Grimey's indie record store in Nashville. "Most of the songs are really Hayley [Williams, singer] explaining her frustrations to us, and that's how we learned," Davis reveals.

You can feel Williams bristle with ire when she declares, "I'll do it myself" and "I can fend for myself" with vitriol on her tongue. It's indicative of Paramore maturing and not wanting to be shoved around or manipulated by either themselves or the record industry. Things are different and people have changed, but Paramore figured out how to grow together. On "Looking Up," Williams cries, "God, this world doesn't need another band," almost uncomfortably aware of just how fortunate she and her friends are. She doesn't even fight to stifle the reverence in her throat. Paramore know what they have in each other and in their music, whether they like it or not.