When Alkaline Trio decided to get back to their roots for their upcoming seventh album, they only had to look to their hometown of Chicago for inspiration. "While we were there recording, we saw a lot of old friends we haven't seen in a long time," singer/guitarist Matt Skiba tells Spinner. "We've always been big fans of Screeching Weasel, Pegboy and Naked Raygun, our forefathers in the Chicago punk scene. Hanging out with everybody then playing Riot Fest with all these great bands we grew up seeing, I think those influences seeped in a lot more."

Skiba says the new album -- the title of which has yet to be revealed -- will feature less overdubs, more straight-ahead guitars and personal song topics, much like their 1998 debut, 'Goddamnit.' The band recorded the 11 tracks in Atlas Studios with producer Matt Allison, who produced the band's first three albums. "Matt has a really great ear and some really great ideas, so he engineered the record and co-produced it. The official production credit is ours though," Skiba says. "We went in with a very strict idea of what we wanted to do."

Aside from Chicago, Skiba also cites SoCal punk stalwarts Social Distortion as having a large influence on the record. "They've never put out a bad album, in my opinion," he says. " I remember being like 'Wow, this sounds like old Social D' [during recording]. It's got that melodic yet melancholic kind of mean guitar lead. It sort of reminds me of 'Mommy's Little Monster' and some of the older stuff and like how psyched I was to hear that."

"I think that we wanted to make a punk rock record that we've been describing as 'thinking-man's punk,'" Skiba continues. "We wanted to do something that's fun but also interesting and lyrically, something that will be fun for people to read along to and hopefully understand."

Skiba also reveals that he wrote eight of the songs on the album while three were written by bassist Dan Adriano. "We both came in with an equal amount of songs, a f---load of songs, and it was pretty easy to pick out the ones we wanted to use," he says. "There are three of us that have equal say in the creative process, so you gotta leave your ego at the door. Dan and I are best friends and we're not competitive with each other at all. We're partners and we try and do everything for the better of the band and for the better of the record."

The album is tentatively due out in February 2010.