Ask Puddle of Mudd frontman Wes Scantlin about the writing and recording of new album Volume 4: Songs in the Key of Love & Hate, and he responds with the same spirit of carefree wanderlust that defines his band: “It’s all easy peezy, dude, no big deal at all...”

Not to him, maybe. Wes Scantlin is custom-made for the new millennium, a rock star without the pretense, and a frontman whose spontaneity propels his offstage personality as much as it does his onstage delivery. “Wes is constantly adjusting to the vibe in the room, throwing his flavor in there and constantly trying to make people laugh,” explains bassist Doug Ardito. “He doesn’t do the David Lee Roth thing, where he delivers the same lines every night, he’s completely off-the-cuff.”

On Volume 4, Scantlin does deliver the same savvy lyrics that fans have come to expect since the band’s multi-platinum debut, Come Clean, weaving subtle innuendo and not-so-subtle lyrical wordplay around vocal hooks so thick, they even seem to make life’s more sour realities easier to swallow. Case in point, “Psycho,” the smash single from the band’s 2007 release Famous that rationalizes a relationship with, ‘maybe I’m the one, who is, a schizophrenic psycho…’

Famous, like both albums before it, was certified Gold after selling more than 500,000 copies in America alone. Propelled by “Psycho,” the album cemented Puddle of Mudd’s status as bona-fide hit makers, and earned them industry accolades including Billboard’s No. 1 Mainstream Rock Song of 2008 and No. 2 Rock Band of the Year, where they finished second only to the Foo Fighters. Keeping in that tradition, the new album goes down like the smoothest shot you’ll ever take. No chaser required - unless, like Scantlin and guitarist Paul Phillips, you opt for a cold, frosty one.