While Fuel's debut album "Sunburn" saw gold sales success back in 1998, the band believes that fans really needed to catch the group live onstage to get a sense of what it's truly made of. With its next album, Fuel is hoping that will all change.

"I don't think we captured the band like we should've captured it [on the first record]," said Carl Bell, lead guitarist and chief songwriter for Fuel, which is now in a New York City studio recording its second album. "This record, so far, is a marked improvement over that."

Fuel scored rock radio hits such as "Shimmer" and "Jesus Or A Gun" off its first album, which was recorded in bucolic North Brookfield, Massachusetts. In an effort to convey more of the group's heavy and aggressive live sound, the band relocated to NYC for the follow-up, currently titled "Something Like Human" and aimed for release in September.

"We were hoping that the aggressiveness of the city would come across on tape," frontman Brett Scallions told MTV News in the midtown studio where the group is working. "We were afraid of the record getting lazy if we were lazy."

On March 1, Scallions, Bell, drummer Kevin Miller, and bassist Jeff Abercrombie hit the studio and began recording some 15 new tracks for its second album; eleven or twelve are expected to make the final cut, while the remainders will go to b-sides. This all took place just weeks after the band came off a 25-month stint in support of "Sunburn."

"Carl was always writing [on tour]," said Scallions. "We had a bunch of recording equipment we took with us, and in the back of the bus, a lot of days, Carl would just sit back there and flesh out his ideas."

"The first record was more of a testimonial of where I was at that time," Bell said of his songwriting. "We were struggling as a band trying to get signed. I was going, 'Oh, no, this music thing is a bunch of crap, I'm never gonna make it.' [The new album will be] a documentation of where I am now. I'm not influenced as much by outside things as inside experiences. A lot of the songs are drawn from inside experiences."

To knock the tunes (one of which was written by Scallions) into shape, the Pennsylvania band rented a secluded house in the Pocono Mountains last January. "Everyone was just focused on playing," Scallions said of the band's rehearsal retreat. "If I had six long days of frustrating work, on that seventh day, I would go snowboarding."

Even with its seemingly mellow origins, "Something Like Human" will reveal a harder side of the band, as Scallions explained.

"It's gonna be much more aggressive," the frontman said. "Some of the songs aren't as frustrated, lyrically, as the last record. We like loud guitars, but we always love a deep hook and sensitive melodies. I think it's still gonna have all those flavors, but be a little more in-your-face."

To that end, Fuel brought in Filter and Vertical Horizon producer Ben Gross. "He blackmailed us," joked Scallions. "To be honest, we had a number of producers we were going through, but Ben did such a phenomenal job on the last Filter record. We really did have a good time with our last producer, but we were looking to make this one rock a little harder. Ben seemed to be our boy."

"The production is definitely different, the writing is definitely different, as well," Bell added. "I just think on your first record you go in and trust a lot of people who have done it before to go in and do the right things for you, and sometimes your vision and their vision don't always parallel. So this time I think we're getting a lot more of our vision on to the record. It just comes from experience. It comes from recording records and gaining experience. It's as simple as that."

Fuel plans to head off to Los Angeles with Gross to mix the album and begin rehearsals for the yet-to-be scheduled "Something Like Human" live tour. "I'm gonna wear makeup, breathe fire and spit blood," Scallions joked.

"One thing I've always said: We make the record so we can play live," the frontman said, more seriously. "If I had a dime for every time someone says, 'I like your record, but then I saw you live and you're much harder and so much more aggressive....'"

As far as playing live is concerned, tour plans have yet to be sorted out for the band, though Fuel will be playing alongside the likes of Filter, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Moby and others at the Rolling Rock Festival in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on August 5 (see "Chili Peppers, Moby, More For Rolling Rock"). The band hopes to release its new single around that time.