WHO: Sevendust, Nonpoint, Social Burn, Wicked Wisdom and One.

WHAT: Heavy metal.

WHEN: 6 p.m. next Friday.

WHERE: Starland Ballroom, 570 Jernee Mill Road, Sayreville; (732) 238-5500 or starlandballroom .com.

HOW MUCH: $20, Ticketmaster.

Over a six-month span in 2004, Sevendust changed management, left its record label and underwent its first lineup change in its decade-long career.

As a band whose aggressive music and mostly dark lyrics reflect its members' everyday life experiences, Sevendust had plenty of inspiration when it began writing its fifth album in early 2005.

The album, titled "Next," was released in October on Winedark Records and entered the Billboard album charts at No. 20.

"I think I had a little bit more of a fire under me," said guitarist John Connolly of the writing process for "Next." "We intended to make as heavy a record as we could.

"It was a pretty stressful time, and we don't write about far-away places and politics and things like that," said Connolly, phoning in from a tour stop in Detroit. "We write about ourselves."

More than one person assumed that they were the subject of several songs on "Next," including the scathing kiss-off, "The Last Song," Connolly said. But the tunes are an amalgam of the Atlanta band's feelings, not an indictment of any one individual.

"It was very hard to pick one person to hate," said Connolly, 37. "One day it was our old manager we hated, one day the president of our [former] label, one day it was [former guitarist Clint Lowery]."

Sevendust, which also includes vocalist Lajon Witherspoon, guitarist Sonny Mayo, bassist Vinnie Hornsby and drummer Morgan Rose, performs next Friday at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville.

Sevendust recruited Mayo, a longtime friend, after Lowery left the band midtour in December 2004. Sevendust finished the tour with a temporary guitarist.

He said Mayo, who performs on "Next" and has played with Snot, Amen and (hed)PE, brings a new energy to the band.

"To look at him, and how excited he is, it brings me back to the excitement of the first record," Connolly said. "When everything was happening for the first time."

Mayo's addition capped six months of turmoil. First, Sevendust fired its management company and hired a new team that the band felt better understood its business situation.

Then the group broke ranks with its longtime label, TVT Records. TVT released Sevendust's first four albums but declined to pick up its option when the band's contract expired.

"I'll never say TVT didn't do great things for this band," Connolly said. "But from the third record ["Animosity," 2001] something weird started to happen."

That "something weird," Connolly said, was TVT's gravitation from heavy rock toward emo (emotional hard-core) bands, whose teen-targeted tales of angst are far removed from Sevendust's muscular metal.

"We're nowhere even remotely close to emo," Connolly said. "We realized that unless we made a move, we were going to get stuck in that weird place where your label doesn't understand you and you don't understand them."

Amid the tumult, Connolly learned that his life would soon change drastically in another way: His wife was pregnant with the couple's first child.

Connolly wrote the standout tune "This Life" after hearing his daughter's heartbeat in the womb for the first time.

In the uncharacteristically positive and emotional song, Connolly speaks to his then-unborn child about the anticipation and joy he feels while awaiting her entrance into the world.

Jordan Connolly turns 1 on Wednesday.

"She's made me appreciate what I do for a living and what I have," Connolly said of his daughter. "She depends on me and the sacrifice that I have to make out on the road away from her."

E-mail: aberback@northjersey.com