Paramore Road Testing 'Mature' New Sound

Paramore's third album is finished, and the group is chomping at the bit to play the new material -- even though most of it will stay on ice until the as-yet-untitled set is released this fall.

"It's hard going back to your old stuff after we've been strictly focusing on new material for the past three months," drummer Zac Farro tells Billboard.com. "You're excited about (the album) 'cause it's done and you just want to go out and play those songs. But there's a lot that has to be done to set it up, so it doesn't come out for awhile and you're just going back and playing your other two records when you just want to play all the new stuff."

Farro says that Paramore is including two songs from the new album -- the follow-up to 2007's platinum "Riot," recorded in Los Angeles with Rob Cavallo producing -- in its opening sets for No Doubt, including the likely first single "Ignorance."

"A lot of people have told us that (the album) is a very mature sound," Farro says. "I don't think we were aiming to be just more mature or whatever, but that's really cool to hear. I think there's a lot of new directions on the record. It sounds more like our live show to me, and the songs are just a lot deeper and have a lot more going on and everybody's parts are really special."

As for pressure to follow up "Riot's" success, Farro says that "there's always gonna be pressure. We tried to push that aside and just make a record we loved. The fans might not like it, and they might think it's too different and whatnot, but at the end of the day we love it and that's the best we can do."


The drummer expects Paramore to do "some heavy touring, like we always do" once the new album is released. But don't expect to see the group, whose "Decode" was a hit from last year's "Twilight" soundtrack, to be haunting subsequent editions of the series.

"We don't want to be, like, the vampire house band," he explains. "It was really fun to be a part of that, and great exposure, but I think 'Twilight' was it for us. We don't want to seem like we're trying to get in every single movie they put out."