Difficult. That's the word often used by Our Lady Peace members to describe the making of their 2005 bicoastal, Bob Rock–produced, ironically titled album, Healthy in Paranoid Times. But the way OLP guitarist Steve Mazur explains it, that carefully selected word is a euphemism for what sounds like recording hell.

“It was very traumatizing,” says Mazur, who's calling from his L.A. home. “We did almost break up. I think we did pretty much break up for a day or two and I think we fired our producer at one point. Then he quit at another point.”¦ Yeah, it was very, very tough. There was some dark days.”

But the band survived and after a hiatus, decided to regroup to record Burn, Burn. With this album, the postgrunge, alt-rock CanCon quartet took a very different approach to recording. Instead of jet-setting to various studios all over North America with a world-renowned hit-maker, they decided to self-produce in lead singer Raine Maida's basement—a move that Mazur was a little apprehensive about at first. This despite the fact that Maida has previous experience producing other artists.

“You really can't get objectivity when you're writing or recording music, so”¦I was a little bit worried about that,” he says. “Like, I have a ton of respect for the producer Rick Rubin and I thought even if Rick Rubin was in my band, I still wouldn't want him producing our record just because you need that outside opinion.”

With that in mind, the group's members devised a system in which they'd record a few songs, then part ways for a month or two and return to the studio with fresh ears. According to Mazur, the time away made it easier to sift through the keepers, fuckworths, and the ones that just needed some rejigging. The emotive alt-rock ballad “Never Get Over You”, for example, fell into the latter category.

“We had an earlier version that was quite different,” recalls Mazur. “It was kind of in limbo. We had gotten it to a certain point during one session and when we came back and listened to it, it was like, ”˜Whoa, there's something really special here. Let's finish this one.' ”

And the same goes for “Paper Moon”, an emotive alt-rock ballad (this one with a gotta-hang-in-there lyrical twist). Then there's “Monkey Brains”, which is a hard-hitting, '90s-retro, paranormal musical experience that Mazur says simply started out as a “jammy Pink Floyd” number.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, getting an LP's worth of material in the can with lengthy intervals in between sessions was a long process. In fact, it took the band just under three years to get 'er done. But OLP—whose current tour finds them mixing up new material with full-album performances of the classics Clumsy and Spiritual Machines—suggests that its fans needn't worry. Mazur's fairly confident the next album won't take as long to complete.

“As we were making the record, we were learning how to produce ourselves, how to get things going, how to record our own songs quicker,” he says, adding, “We feel like we've got it pretty dialled now.”

Our Lady Peace plays the Vogue Theatre Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (May 13, 14, and 15).