With their third album, Kings Of Leon have pretty much abandoned the Southern evangelical guilt that made 2005’s Aha Shake Heartbreak come off like the strident anti-proselytizing of renegade preachers’ sons out to sully their name—which is, in fact, what they are. In the years since, the members of the Followill clan—brothers Caleb (vocals, guitar), Nathan (drums) and Jared (bass), along with cousin Matthew (guitar)—remain entangled in the process of losing their religion. On Because Of The Times, their once tentative Southern-rock leanings devolve into zig-zaggy fits of blues-boogie ambling, garage-crud frenzy and heavy-lidded balladry. “I’m awful sick and tired of this game,” sings Caleb on bittersweet shuffle “The Runner.” Given that mindset, Times has its share of promising ideas that achieve ignition but go nowhere: the linear atonality and remedial “She gonna have my baby” refrain of “Knocked Up”; the Pixies-lite “My Party”; the poor man’s David Lee Roth screams that punctuate hillbilly-mating dance “Charmer.” In all, it’s Kings Of Leon’s sloppiest and best-produced album so far. This seeming contradiction works more often than not, and there’s enough evidence here to suggest bigger and better things once all that us-against-the-world hell-raising wears thin.

MAGNET caught up with Caleb at his Tennessee ranch, golfing and waiting as RCA put the final touches on Kings Of Leon’s latest.

You guys are at home right now?
We just pulled up—we played a quick nine holes of golf.

So you’re just sitting around Nashville waiting for the new album to drop?
We’re wrapping it all up now, getting the album artwork done and taking all the pictures—doing all the not-so-fun parts of it. We actually get back on the road in about two weeks, back over to the U.K. for a little while.

You’ve really caught on over there.
It’s a lot bigger than people here really know. We haven’t been over there in a while, so I’m sure we won’t be the U.K. darlings anymore; we’ll have to work our way back into favor. But I’m not scared.

How did you wind up with such a loyal fan base there?
You don’t really have to spoon-feed people over there. If they like something, they’re not afraid to say it. When we first came out, we really weren’t taking ourselves that seriously; we were just having fun with the music. They were into it. And in the U.K., they’re mesmerized by the South; everything on TV is about the South. They really liked our story—the fact that we were family, and we were young and gettin’ onstage and trying our best to kick ass every night. They got it over there, and America’s just now starting to catch on.

The last time we spoke, your first EP (2003’s Holy Roller Novocaine) had just come out and the music was a lot tamer. Things have really evolved since then.
In the beginning, we thought we were being risky with the subject matter and stuff. But as a band, we weren’t completely honest with the music and we were timid. We weren’t as experienced, so we couldn’t play the songs as well. Now we’ve learned the E chord and the G chord and all that shit, so we’re making our own music. I really don’t know how to play the guitar, so I just find stuff that I like, get good at it and, before you know it, I’m fooling the world into thinking I can actually play.

I remember talking to your younger brother, and he had literally just learned how to play bass. Basically, he locked himself in a room with some records and taught himself.
He was a kid, and we told him if he learned how to play bass, we’d let him smoke our weed. He did it, and then he gave up weed.

You were in your teens when you started, so it’s been like growing up in public for you guys. What has that done to your relationship as bandmates, brothers, cousins, whatever?
When you’re surrounded by your family, all you have is honesty. We’ve gone through some tough times, and I think we keep each other grounded as much as possible. When you’re on the road, you feel like you’re 12 feet tall and bulletproof. But the fact that we’re all together, we can bring each other down to earth. Because if you keep going, you become an asshole. I’ve met a lot of people, and a lot of them are assholes. I don’t want to turn out to be Chris Robinson (of the Black Crowes).

I’d imagine living in Tennessee helps keep you grounded.
Absolutely. We recorded this record here in Nashville and wrote it out at our farm. Now more than ever, Nashville feels like home. It’s a good little town; it’s growin’ on us. We’re trying to bring as many cool people here as we can and weed out the old [commercial] country stuff. We play shuffleboard at this place, and they play [all kinds of] country music. And when the new country music comes on, man, it’s like a two-year-old is writing those songs.

So are you all living on the farm?
Me and Nathan are; Jared and Matt have condos next to each other. The farm is about 45 minutes outside of Nashville, so we have a little townhouse in the city in case we get too drunk to drive out there.

What about the title, Because Of The Times?
It was actually the name of an old church conference we went to as little kids—it was just for the preachers and their kids. We had a lot of good memories there. As soon as I came up with Aha Shake Heartbreak for the last album, my little brother said the next one had to be called Because Of The Times.

You guys grew up the sons of a Pentecostal preacher, but it wasn’t your typical church environment.
It wasn’t like one of those really dead churches. It was church, and we liked it. To this day, I’m scared of it, but onstage it’s what we go for—trying to get as close to that as possible. The way we were raised completely made us the way we are. We all know that we’re far from the people we should be, but I think it’s cowards who call rock ’n’ roll the devil’s music. The best music in the world is when the person is either running toward God or away from him.

But with most faith-based music, the creativity is sucked right out of it.
There isn’t a lot of music out there right now where people are being honest. Honesty is the only thing that’s going to make music stand the test of time.

The new songs are some of your most visceral. What sort of place were you in emotionally when you made this album?
Everything had settled down. We came home and back to reality—back to realizing that we’d done some really great things and been honored by some important people, and they back our music. The people who are important to us made it known that we had to keep going. We’d been playing with bands that were playing big arenas—and to be honest, we weren’t that scared of it. We kind of liked it. I’m scared to death of being really big, but I’m also scared to death of not being really big.

But I don’t hear any obvious effort to sound more commercial.
We just learned so much, and this record is like, “Fuck everything. We don’t care whether people love us or hate us. We’re going in there to make the first record we can be really proud of.” We played really hard, we wrote really hard parts and we only wrote stuff that made us smile. Even though we said we weren’t going to make a live record, 85 percent of what you hear is completely live. But at the end of the day, we experimented a little bit—tested the water.

The lead track, “Knocked Up,” is more than seven minutes long. Your earlier stuff was much more to the point.
We were sick of having to play 30 damn songs in a set. [Laughs] We had a ball in there. We’d go in there first thing in the morning and have pineapple Malibus, then midday we’d start drinking wine and go play wall ball. But we knew when to turn it on, and it just happened. I mean, if this damn record doesn’t hurry up and come out, we’re gonna make another one. We can’t write ’em quick enough.

I saw you guys on VH-1 Classic with the Pretenders. What was it like being onstage with Chrissie Hynde?
It was nuts. We’ve ripped them off for years. She’s a huge fan; it would blow your mind how much she knows about us.

How’d you meet her?
She came to one of our early shows in London and was too nervous to even talk to us. She told me they asked her to do this VH-1 thing, and she told them the only way she’d do it was if we did it, too.

Yeah, what a weird mix: Incubus, you guys, Iggy Pop. Those interviews between songs seemed a little strained with everyone sitting around in a circle.
Nobody really wanted to be there. We were in a casino—we wanted to gamble. We’d just a won a bunch of money the night before.

How do your parents feel about your music?
Our whole family’s proud of us. We took the family name and used it for something other than a painting company or something. They get to experience this with us. My parents are divorced, so we bring my dad to the West Coast and my mom to the East Coast. We don’t want them gettin’ into any fights or nothin’.