It has been just over a year since musician Bif Naked announced that she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. At that point in time, it was perceived that she went into hiding. The only difference? She never hid.

The raw-food-eating, hardcore gym-addicted vegan tried as best as she could to have a "normal" life during her intensive 13-month stretch of chemotherapy and radiation. At a point when many cancer survivors wouldn't consider crawling out of bed, Bif decided to spend those difficult months writing and recording her new CD, 'The Promise.' "It was suggested to me that it might be beneficial to start songwriting; that was my next goal this year anyway," she tells Spinner. "I had toured the shit out of 'Superbeautifulmonster' for three years, took a break, looked at my watch and said 'Well, its time to record something else so I can go and do it all again!'"

In order to make the recording sessions as flexible as possible, recalls Naked, "the studio was moved to a block from where my apartment is. Sometimes I only sang an hour a day. One month, I went in for one vocal session and then got so sick that I didn't go back into the studio for another three weeks. It was a bit of a gong show, and a slow process but ultimately hugely, hugely rewarding for me. Sure, I was a bald, yellow frog, and there was one point where I physically couldn't take another step walking, but it never occurred to me that I couldn't sing."

Her initial breast cancer concern came in the form of a lump found shortly after returning home from her honeymoon in December of 2007. "I was watching TV and felt this weird spot above my nipple; it was like the princess and the pea, this awareness of something going on. I remember hearing somewhere a long time ago 'cysts are painful, tumors are not.' I knew right away that it felt wrong. A couple weeks later, I was in for my mammogram and it was like being in Vegas at a slot machine, with all the lights going off and the coins coming out of that f---ing thing. The ladies were running around like clucking chickens, stepping into action."

With the recording sessions happening in the middle of her chemo regimen, one would expect Naked's vocals to be softened, and her lyrics to be about the wonderment of life. On the contrary: a number of tracks on the record are as musically screamo as Bif has been in years. Take for example the first single, 'Sick,' in which she unearths her best Lamb of God impersonation during the chorus. With lines like "My chest it hurts/I cannot breathe" and "Broken, you're better than you've ever been", it seems clear that the song is specifically about chemo, but Naked insists that the track comes with a dual meaning. "Heartache and illness are great metaphors," she explains. "They are incredibly similar. If you've had your heart broken, you've felt punched in the stomach and had the wind knocked out of you. It f---s with you, it cripples you. Everybody has felt crippling heartache; that type of knee-buckling desperation is very similar to chemo, just spread it over about 20 days."

While she is planning to hit the road this fall, there is another "tour" of sorts that Bif takes on a weekly basis, and doesn't plan to slow that down one bit. "One thing I'll never stop doing is going to chemo wards -- even now that I'm finished -- and tell jokes to the patients. I go there so I can greet the rookies as they come into the program, 'cause I know they are scared. When they arrive, I say 'What are you in for?' with a smile, like we're all on cell block 8. I wanna be the welcome wagon! If no one else has that job, I wanna apply for it!"

A free download of Bif Naked's viral-only single, 'I Won't Cry (F--- You 2),' can be found here.