Off the heels of the mediocre success of their previous release, Hoobastank’s Doug Robb knows how important their upcoming new album is to his band. “We knew we had to work our asses off, as if this was our first record,” lead singer Doug Robb told Alternative Addiction in a recent interview. The band’s last record, Every Man For Himself, did reach Gold status in sales, but is easily over shadowed by the band’s two previous releases that both went Platinum. “We had come off two successful records, each more successful than the one before it,” explained Robb. “[We] figured, lets just do what we do and everything will be fine. And I think we were just too relaxed. Some of our favorite songs are on that record, but I think our approach in general was just too relaxed.” The upcoming release, titled Fornever is the band’s fourth major label release. Robb says the band chose the title due to the diversity of themes found throughout the record. “It’s really just a combination of Forever and Never,” said Robb of the album’s title. “The more I looked over the lyrics and the feeling of the record, it was becoming more clearly obvious that it was really black and white, a love hate type of record. Things are really great or things are really bad, kinda a play on the whole duality.” The band started working on the album just months after coming off of their tour for Every Man For Himself, but struggled to get anything down in early writing sessions. “Nothing we came up with we really liked. And the more we came up with that we didn’t like the more we realized we needed to take a step back,” said Robb. After a break the band started to make progress, and finished a collection of tracks that Robb feels have very distinct inspirations, something he hasn’t always been able to say for past songs he’s written. “Sometimes I look at songs [that I wrote] and think, ‘Where did I come up with this?’ or ‘Why did I write this?’” explained Robb. “But I feel like at least right now, all the songs on this record have a very clear moment of inspiration. Like I knew exactly what it was, and when it was, and knew what the song was going to be about.” Robb is no stranger to writing inspired lyrics, especially the band’s 2004 #1 hit, “The Reason.” The song is easily the band’s most popular song to date, and was one of the most played songs on radio the year it was released. However, Robb had an interesting take on the song’s popularity. “The success of “The Reason” was kind of a double edged sword. The success is great, there’s a lot that people don’t realize that comes with the success of having a song like that,” explained Robb. “At one point you are playing sold out Amphitheaters, and you have to be able to take a step back and say, you know what? This band is not this big yet. This song is this big, but we are not this big.” Most bands in a similar position would let all the success get to their head, but Robb was able to keep the band grounded, even with the songs incredible success. “I think a lot of bands go, man we’re huge now. I think for the most part, we knew that we just had to be able to come back to where we were used to.”