Not in a bad way, mind you. As drummer Tre Cool told MTV News' Robert Mancini, the vacation from sanity has yielded some "f***ing amazing" results. "Warning," which will be the band's first album in three years when it arrives this fall, is shaping up to be a more ambitious and more optimistic album, according to Tre. There's talk of acoustic guitars, deeper grooves, and even a touch of hope in frontman Billie Joe Armstrong's lyrics.

Tre seems optimistic that the album and the band's slot on this summer's Vans Warped tour will help Green Day reclaim its spot at the top of the punk-pop heap and "remind everybody who's the best." He explains that theory, as well as his affinity for grass skirts and more, right here in our MTV News Online feature interview...

Tre Cool: What are you wearin'?

MTV News: Uh, I'm wearing a top hat, tails, spats...

Tre: I got a grass skirt... some coconuts.

MTV: Nice. Now, are you guys sprinting to get this album finished before the Warped Tour starts?

Tre: Everyone's sprinting somewhere. I don't know where we're sprinting. We're not really sprinting. We're just doing the same pace, but it's a pretty fast pace for recording. We're faster than every other band, pretty much. That's what I've been told by people. We practice for a long time, like two years. We've been practicing and writing songs and playing them, and playing them, and writing new ones, and playing them, and playing them, and just hanging out at home with our families and getting together every day, five days a week, playing. People think we're off in Hawaii, you know, kicking back and sh**, but we're in Oakland playing our jams. [RealAudio]

MTV: You must know the stuff inside out.

Tre: Dude, literally, we could play the album, all our parts, without the other guys there, we know the songs so well.

The band's new, deeper, acoustic sound, and Billie Joe's sunny side... NEXT!