In Spring 2009, the band began recording sessions in
Vancouver with
Famous producer Brian Howes. Recording in a three part, three week session in Canada initially because of extensive touring duties. Afterwards the band relocated to
Hollywood,
California for three weeks for additional production with producer and engineer
Brian Virtue and
Come Clean and
Life on Display producer
John Kurzweg. Their first time together in six years. Scantlin commented on production work, "Even though we hate messing with success, we felt adding newcomer Brian Virtue to the producer mix would be a welcome change. What we got is 10 tracks of exactly what we were looking for." The band announced through their MySpace and follow-up interviews in late summer that the album had finished production and was in mixing. Bassist Doug Ardito confirmed only 10 songs to avoid what he called "filler material" and to have new listeners focus more on non-single songs. Around 21 songs were worked on during production, and whittled down to 10 to 12 tracks according to singer Scantlin. Scantlin described the sound as more edgier, punk rock, similar to earlier releases. The album was released on December 8, 2009. It debuted at #95 on the
Billboard 200. It sold around 100,000 copies in the United States, and the lead single "
Spaceship" also sold well over 100,000 copies.
Volume 4 was however the band's first album to not produce a
Hot 100 hit, and, unlike the previous albums
Come Clean,
Life on Display and
Famous, neither the album sales or any single sales topped 500,000. The album was mixed at
Ocean Way Recording. On February 9, 2010, the and released the single
Shook Up the World, a song they contributed to the
2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. The single was written and recorded in 2009 during the same sessions as
Volume 4: Songs in the Key of Love & Hate. Shook Up the World would later be released as a
bonus track on the deluxe edition of the album that was exclusively released on the band's official website on April 15, 2010. ==Track listing==