Did you go into this second album with a different approach?

Comeau: With the first record, we wanted to make it pop-punk, and we had all these rules. Now we're like, "Fuck it, let's just write good songs." And if a song's super-slow, fine; and if it's a good song that's really fucking heavy, let's just keep pursuing it. With this song called "One", we were like, "We should do a dancehall rhythm like Sean Paul!" And for a long time, we kept going back to it, and finally we got something. It doesn't sound anything like dancehall, but that's where it came from. It's about all those sorts of accidents.

What was the inspiration behind the track "Crazy?" With lyrics about diet pills and plastic surgery . . .

Bouvier: It comes from just looking around us at what's happening with young girls nowadays. You're looking at pop stars who are fifteen, sixteen years old, on the cover of Maxim wearing pretty much nothing. Or you'll be walking down the street, and from far away you'll be like, "Whoa! That's a hot girl." And she'll come by, and you're like, "Holy shit, she's like fucking nine years old!"

Comeau: Girls now all look up to these images that are so distorted that their goals for themselves become totally unrealistic. We have friends who are beautiful girls, and the way they see themselves, it's like, "Wait a minute, are you kidding me?" The song is a wake-up call, like, "What the fuck is going on?"

What was it like working with Bob Rock, who's produced giants like Motley Crue, Aerosmith and Metallica and was immortalized in Some Kind of Monster?

Bouvier: We were at this studio in Montreal -- small, really not glamorous at all -- and we asked him, "Hey, Bob, are we gonna make a good record?" And he said, "Don't even worry about it, man." He's so calm, and he knows what to do -- plus, he's an incredible guy and so cool to hang around.

Comeau: Our goal was to surround ourselves with someone who's been around greatness. And we got to hear how those records were made, and the mistakes those bands made -- it was cool to hear that they're human. And there were some crazy, fucked-up drug stories and groupie stories, and that was interesting too.

So whose opinion did you listen to when you were putting the new album together?

Comeau: There's one guy who's always with us: Patrick, who runs our Web site and does our merchandise. He's been hanging out and sleeping on floors with us since we had our first demo. When we were writing in Vancouver, we'd send him MP3 demos, and he'd call us when he'd heard them. He's always super-honest and totally on -- he would never say "this sucks," but he'd be like, "Eh." But instead he was like, "Dude, this is so good! Holy shit, I've got a job for the next five years!" And when Patrick likes it and the band likes it, we know.

Bouvier: We don't really trust anybody's opinion more than our own. We know our audience: we're actually out there playing to people, seeing their reactions.

Comeau: We'll get the e-mails and the letters, people saying "this song really helped me or changed me" -- or bad things about a song. That's the best feedback.

Your music can get emotional -- do you sometimes see fans having intense reactions?

Comeau: When we play "Perfect," we can see people in the front row really crying.

Bouvier: I remember in Burlington, [Canada], this one girl -- this was when nobody knew who we were -- was there waiting outside the door at two in the afternoon, and she was like, "I know about you, I've heard your first demos." And she was at our show there the next year, sitting on the monitor onstage crying. She hung out with us a bunch of times, and had really bad problems with her parents. Now she lives on the street.

Comeau: We always hang out with everybody coming to the shows. When you go to a city, if those same kids aren't there, then you're doing something wrong, you know? Because if you lose those early fans, it means you've lost the real hardcore fans.

So who are your heroes, the bands you really look up to?

Bouvier: I look up to bands like Linkin Park, bands that I know work really hard. Also bands like Green Day, that have been around for a while.

Wait, I heard something about you guys playing Green Day covers back in the day, maybe in high school?

Bouvier: [Chuck and I] started a band together when we were thirteen. And we played two covers: Green Day's "Head Case" and Nirvana's "Rape Me." But that was it for the covers -- if you're going to start a band, fucking start writing.

Comeau: We wrote a lot of crappy songs to get here!

You mention Green Day: How do you guys feel about the idea that you're one of these next-generation pop-punk bands?

Bouvier: First of all, we're not a punk band: punk bands are like back in the Seventies. And what's "pop-punk?" It's music that's got energy, it's got melody -- yeah, OK, but it's just music, and I don't want to be put in any category. It's not about being part of a certain genre -- it's about being the best band possible, like Weezer.

Comeau: Yeah, bands like No Doubt and Weezer and U2. They're not ska bands anymore, they're not pop bands anymore.

Bouvier: They could put out a song that's really slow or a super-fast punk song, and no one would be like, "Oh, that's so out of their style" because they've grown out of that. They're just a band that writes great songs, and they do whatever they want!

Comeau: This is a record that's one step closer to that for us. And it's one step at a time, trying to find your own voice, trying to become a band -- not a punk band, not a pop band, just a band.