Chicago's Local H are in the studio this month to record their first album of original material since 2008's critically acclaimed concept album 12 Angry Months. The two-man band -- frontman Lucas covers both guitar and bass through an extra pick up in his guitar while drummer Brian St. Clair pounds out the rest of the sound -- is working at Engine Studios with noted metal producer Sanford Parker (Bloodiest, Pelican, Yakuza), with whom Lucas recently worked on his second solo album. The new Local H album, tentatively titled Hallelujah! I'm A Bum, will be out this summer.

"Sanford's awesome," Lucas says. "He's been at the forefront of the most interesting things happening out of Chicago for a while, and it's truly an invigorating experience to work with him. And, if he would quit fucking feeding me all this whiskey, I'd be alright."

Local H has been road-testing the new songs for the past year. Songs slated for recording include audience favorites "Another February" and "Paddy Considine."

Despite a four-year hiatus from recording, Local H has kept busy with two releases in the interim --Local H: The Island Years (a quasi-greatest hits that is part of Universal Music's ICON series) andLocal H's Awesome Mix-Tape #1, an EP of covers. And, they've continued to bring their gut-quaking live show to audiences all over the country. In 2010, they put together the "6 Angry Records Tour," during which the band allowed a fan to blindly select the name of one of their six studio albums from a hat at the start of the show and then played the album chosen on the spot that night. To complement that, they embarked on "The Singles Tour: All the Hits All Night" in 2011, playing only songs they had released as singles, a contrarian move to the "play a classic album in its entirety" fad that was just heating up. Lucas has also spent time performing and recording country-ish, alt-rock for people who like metal with his seven-piece solo band, Scott Lucas & the Married Men.