The desire to draw "a link from the past to the present and to the future of this rock band" is what led to Papa Roach's new album, "Time For Annihilation...On the Record and on the Road," due out Aug. 31.

"It connects all the dots," frontman Jacoby Shaddix tells Billboard.com of the set, which mixes five new songs with nine live tracks. "It's essentially an EP plus a live album, so it's like the best of both worlds."

Shaddix says the live portion of the project "really came from fans. They kept asking over the years, 'When are you gonna release a live record?' So we threw that up in the air and everybody was like, 'Let's f***in' do it. It's time for the band to do something like that." But when the group's new label, Eleven Seven Music, suggested including some fresh studio material on the set, Shaddix says the quartet "didn't want to just release some B-sides" and opted instead to go into the studio with producer David Bendeth.

"With the new songs, we wanted to go with a little bit more of a modern sound," Shaddix explains. "On the last couple records we really discovered the rock 'n' roll band within Papa Roach, and this time around we...started f***ing around with sequencing and loops and beats and stuff like that. I think it's just a breath of fresh air for us."

That approach can be heard particularly on "Burn" and on "Kick in the Teeth" -- "Time For Annihilation's" first single, which climbed to No. 16 on Billboard's Rock Songs chart. Meanwhile, "The Enemy" has what Shaddix calls "that classic Papa Roach stomp," and "No Matter What" is a quieter, ballad-like track not unlike "Scars" and "Forever," but with an uncharacteristically positive attitude inspired by Shaddix's long relationship with is wife. "She was like, 'You always write songs about hard times...Look at our life together. We've been through so much, and we're still standing. Why don't you write a song about that?' So I did," says Shaddix. "I'm into commitment. I'm into the long haul -- with my wife in particular, and my band. That's what that song is about. I'm definitely excited to see where our music goes now with this kind of new perspective on my life."

Papa Roach is gearing up to promote "Time For Annihilation" with a North American tour that begins Sept. 10 in Nashville, followed by a run on the European Taste of Chaos tour that kicks off Nov. 15 in Helsinki, Finland. The group plans to release three singles from the album and is preparing to shoot videos for "Burn" and "No Matter What." And Shaddix says the band will have a ProTools rig on the road the entire time so Papa Roach can hit the ground running on a new album in early 2001. 

"We wrote 12 songs for ('Time For Annihilation'), but I would really like to just start fresh, with a new perspective and confidence" he says. "To be honest with you, I was just lost and not very confident at the beginning of the writing process, then towards the end I was getting back into who I was. So now I'm excited. I want to start writing again and get back into creation mode."