After being allotted just 17 days to record their last album, 3 Doors Down have enjoyed recording their new album at their own pace, a process that lead singer Brad Arnold tells Alternative Addiction took the band almost a year. Prior to their time recording the new album, the band took a full year off, mostly to take a break from the relentless touring the band did in support of their last album, and also to recharge and prepare to write their new record. “We were all just kinda worn out a little bit,” says Arnold. “So we went away for a little while and cleared our heads and came back fresh.” The result was an extremely productive writing session for the band that produced sixteen songs worth of new material, which became a problem when Universal informed the band that they had to narrow it down to twelve for the new album. “In the past we wrote a couple extra, but it was always pretty obvious what was going to go on the record,” explained Arnold. “But this one, the four songs that didn’t go on there could have just as easily [gone] on there.” Arnold says fans might see the axed songs on a B-sides or special edition album in the future from the band. The songs on the new album were written in two locations, one half in a farmhouse in Nashville, and the second half in a rented house in Orlando. “We recorded it right there in the house,” says Arnold. “You really don’t need a studio anymore. It turned out sounding great.” As for producing the new album, 3 Doors Down selected Johnny K, the same producer as the band’s previous release “Seventeen Days.” “He is a pleasure to work with, he settles in with you and he’s like one of the boys,” Arnold said of Johnny K. “A lot of times producers can [make a record] become their record, he’s not like that. He always has great ideas and he’s always willing to try anything.” While the band may have chosen the same producer, fans shouldn’t expect an identical sounding record to their previous effort. Arnold explained that the band used string arrangements on this record much more than in the past. “There are always string sections on songs, but necessarily on just the soft slow songs. A lot of times strings can make a big rock song sound like a big rock song. Johnny composed a lot of the sting arrangements, and he did a great job on that.”