Making the transition from "screamo" to pure, driving rock and roll--with a touch of an odd instrument here and there--has been an eye-opening experience for California's Thrice [ tickets ].

With its latest album, "Vheissu," the band turned to a Brit-pop producer, eschewing the standard knob-turners for its genre. But drummer Riley Breckenridge admitted that the group found out on its winter headlining tour that, for some fans, the change has been hard to swallow.

"There were a lot of people who said they weren't really feeling a certain song on the record. Then they heard it live and it won them over, and [the album] took on this whole new life and they really enjoyed it," Breckenridge said.

Having done the Warped Tour multiple times, the group has returned this winter and spring to another Kevin Lyman production--Taste of Chaos, the winter version of the Warped Tour that this year stars Thrice, Deftones, Atreyu, Story of the Year and others.

Breckenridge recently talked with LiveDaily about "Vheissu," working with Lyman on Taste of Chaos, and the group's changing sound.

LiveDaily: I understand the recording of "Vheissu" delayed your Warped Tour start.

Riley Breckenridge: We were recording ["Vheissu"], and we've made the mistake in the past of booking the tour right at the end of a recording session. We wanted to make sure that we didn't make that mistake again. We wanted to give ourselves a little bit of a cushion.

How was working with producer Steve Osborne?

He worked with Doves, Peter Gabriel, U2, Massive Attack, so he definitely comes from a very different place than anyone we've ever worked with. He didn't really have a clear-cut idea of what we had sounded like in the past, or have any idea of what we should sound like. He was just really concerned with making the best record we could possibly make. That played a big part in why we chose to record with him, and it ended up working out great, I think.

Why did you decide to go with Osborne?

We wanted to do something different. We worked with the same producer on the last few records, and learned a lot from him. We kind of wanted to expand what we did musically, and we felt the best way to do that was to start fresh with a new producer--somebody who wouldn't be the obvious choice. A lot of bands in the [Warped Tour] genre, there's kind of like this group of producers that everybody goes to--Howard Benson, Johnny Feldman. We wanted to do something a little different, and shake it up a little bit.

What was the most important thing you learned from Osborne?

The biggest things were establishing a groove and improving our dynamics. We've always tried to kind of blend really heavy and aggressive stuff with stuff that's a little more mellow and melodic. He really helped us in that regard, also with all the new instrumentation we put on to this record--whether it was piano or Rhodes keyboards or synthesizer and stuff. He really has a firm grasp on how to incorporate that kind of stuff, and we were kind of stepping into new territory with that. So he helped us to realize a lot of the ideas that we had, but we weren't really sure about how to actually pull them off. It was a very creative process. And, usually, recording almost feels mathematic at times, because you're plugging these songs and pieces into the magic recording machine, and there's not a lot of room to explore new stuff. If you get a spur of the moment idea, there's not always time to chase that idea and see if you can make it a reality. With Steve, we definitely did a lot of stuff on the fly. There was a lot of experimentation. It made it feel like a creative process in the studio, when usually the creative process is the writing process.

How do you feel this album fits in with your catalog?

I think our influences are a lot more apparent on this record than they have been in the past. We listen to everything from jazz to Brit pop to electronic stuff to movie soundtracks, and we just really wanted to incorporate a lot of different things. "Vheissu" is definitely less of the "screamo" kind of stuff, and more rock.

You mentioned your influences. Who are some of them?

One of the bands we look up to the most is Radiohead, because they're constantly reinventing themselves. They add new aspects to their music with each record that they make, and they pull it off very well. We would hope to be able to do that. They're probably the biggest collective influence.

How did you come up with the name "Vheissu" for your album?

We knew when we were making the record that we wanted to have the album have a one-word title. And we didn't want the title to be weighted in any way. Sometimes an album title, it kind of gives away something about the record. This is a word that we pulled out of a literary deconstruction of a Thomas Pynchon book, "V." [The deconstruction says] that it's a word for the opening to a bunch of tunnels underneath Mount Vesuvious. We kind of like that, in that we kind of feel like with every decision we make with the band, or every tour we take or record we make, we're standing at the gateway of a bunch of different tunnels. You don't know how things are going to end up. You just have to pick a tunnel and go for it.

How is it to work with Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman again, this time on Taste of Chaos?.

He's been an awesome guy, and he's been very supportive of us for a long time. We've been apart of four different Warped tours, I think the first one we did was in 2001. We did a portion of that. We did a portion of the Warped tour in 2002, and we did all of it in 2003, and all of it this last summer. Kevin's always been a big supporter of the band. And we're just glad that he's given us the opportunity to come out and do the Taste of Chaos.

It's an interesting bill with you, the Deftones and Atreyu.

I'm psyched that the Deftones are on it.

Are you a big Deftones fan?

Definitely. I've been a fan for years, and they've definitely been a big influence on us. To be able to share the stage with them every night, get to watch them every night and to know we have two months to hang out and talk about music and talk shop, it's really exciting.

Have you ever met them?

We did about two weeks of a tour in late 2003 or 2004. It was with them and Thursday. It was really, really cool. I had never seen them live before that, even though I had been a huge fan. Being able to play our set and go watch them play was totally inspiring.

What are you going to do when Taste of Chaos is over?

We have two weeks off, then we're heading out [to the United Kingdom] to do a festival called Give It a Name with us and My Chemical Romance, Atreyu, Panic! at the Disco and Lost Prophets. It's kind of like Warped Tour in that there's a varied grouping of bands. You'll get a lot of different kids from a bunch of different music scenes, and a bunch of different tastes of music. It might give us the chance to play in front of new people in the UK, which will be fun. We just came off a co-headlining tour with Coheed and Cambria in the UK. It'll be good to get back over there again, see some people again, play for people again. And then after that we're doing some of mainland Europe like Germany, Spain, France, Norway and Sweden.