Collective Soul will return to the musical mix next week with the release of its fifth album, "Blender," while the first single from the new record, "Why Pt. 2" is already working its way up the rock and active rock radio charts.

The Atlanta-based band originally issued a track called "Why" as an Australian B-side to the "Breathe" single from the group's 1994 debut, "Hints, Allegations And Things Left Unsaid," although frontman Ed Roland recently explained that "Pt. 2" was not intended to be a sequel to the earlier song.

[article id="1441636"]"Lyrically, it's a song where I just kept singing, 'Why?'"[/article] Roland told MTV Radio of the new track. [article id="1441636"]"We had already written a song once, [guitarist] Ross [Childress] and I, called 'Why' that was a B-side on the first CD. The first CD was made up of a lot of collected demos... [that] doesn't mean that there weren't others. And one of the other ones that we just pulled

out was called "Why," and we later used it as a B-side."[/article]

[article id="1441636"]"So when I was writing this song," he continued, "I just kept singing 'Why' and couldn't get it out of my head. Then I remembered we already had a song [called] 'Why,' so I thought, 'Well, it doesn't have anything to do with that song and not really many people heard that song, so I'll just put 'Pt. 2' at the end of it and try to be cute and clever and move on.' Basically, [I got] lazy and didn't want to rewrite the song." [RealAudio][/article]

Roland also indicated that such a laid-back, nonchalant attitude pervaded much of the recording sessions for "Blender," which he said was a reaction, in some ways, to the meticulousness that went into Collective Soul's previous LP, 1999's "Dosage."

"['Blender'] is a very open and very loose record, and I don't mean that in a sloppy way,"

he

described. "It's just on the last record, we put it under a microscope and we made sure that everything was perfectly placed and perfectly played. It's good to do a record like that, but we spent a lot of time in the studio.

"Whereas with this record, we recorded it in our rehearsal space in Atlanta, which is just this big open room. We rolled in the ProTools, learned the song, and then played it. I don't think anybody took more than three takes, once they learned the part they were going to play, so it has that kind of vibe, which is good."

"There are a couple of [songs], actually, where the first time I sang and played them, we used what you usually call the scratch track," Roland said. "Those

actually made it onto the [record]. That was the [final] vocal track. That's the attitude [we had]. It wasn't like, 'How did you play it?' It was, 'How did it feel?' It's much more open and loose, in a sense, and a lot more fun. I think that comes across, 'cause we had an absolute blast making the record." [RealAudio]

Collective Soul will issue "Blender" on October 10, and the band is currently out and about on the road opening up for fellow Southern rockers Creed. The Creed-Collective Soul outing is scheduled to roll into Spring, Texas on Wednesday night and continue through an October 18 gig in Oklahoma City.