Radiation Year’s new album, “Age of the Everglades,” has been a labor of love for the Augusta-based quartet. For six months, the band practiced, refined, recorded, rerecorded and polished the 10 songs that compose the album. For that, vocalist Nick Chiasson is very, very proud.

“It’s the first [release] we’ve all wrote together. We all express our independent musicianship on it,” said Chiasson. “It was all spawned from jam sessions, taking all these different parts and making them fit together. We took all our different influences, from hard-core to funk to jazzy kind of stuff to Southern rock, and tried to make it work.”

Chiasson, guitarist Zack Sears, bassist Seif Al-Malky and drummer Chris Sweet explicitly try to separate themselves, musically, from their hard-core peers. They’d easily get lumped in with metal and screamo bands, but Radiation Year has a lot more going for them than just that. It has as much Primus, Mr. Bungle and early Red Hot Chili Peppers in its sound as it does contemporary hard-core.

As evidenced by “Age of the Everglades,” they’re out to redefine what hard-core means – listen to “Gun Control Means Using Both Hands” on their MySpace page ( www.myspace.com/radiationyear), and you might have the same reaction I did. That is, a pleased kind of shock when Sears’ slide guitar enters about a quarter of the way in. Or the totally sweet handclap breakdown in the middle of “Bonnie Bodacious.” In fact, I’m gonna go right ahead and say it – that song rocks. A lot. Seriously. Get online and listen to it, or better yet, go buy the album at Bull Moose, or get it when the band plays at 103 Ultra Lounge in Orono on Friday, Dec. 7.

“We like being able to say we wrote something pretty original. I think that’s very rare, especially in hard-core,” said Chiasson. “I feel like a lot of hard-core is so processed and copied and generic now, and while we all still love hard-core, we want to add to it and do more than that.”

Chiasson, a transplant from Louisiana by way of Florida, deals with a lot more than just the standard issue stuff in his lyrics – girls, or the lack thereof, or “I’m so depressed and here’s why, blah blah blah.” He’s got a lot on his mind, and he sings about it in his songs.

“The content is pretty realistic, and kind of graphic at points. I’m from the South, and I grew up with a Pentecostal background. People are always talking about Armageddon and Revelation and stuff,” he said. “I grew up with that rubbed in my face. I write a lot about that. The way that people use fear to control people. I’ve always been very taken aback by that my whole life.”

“Age of the Everglades” will be officially released on Dec. 4. The band does not yet have a label, so it’s busy shopping it around to the indies and the majors. They’re already in talks with everyone from Equal Vision to Epic, so here’s hoping something really good works out for them. Ideally, they want to get it released nationally and then tour, tour, tour. Heavy airplay on WTOS-FM and WCYY-FM has helped; so have some high-profile gigs around the state with bands such as As I Lay Dying and Aiden.

They’re also in the running for the Rockstar Taste of Chaos Battle of the Bands again this year, after winning it last year and having the opportunity to play that tour when it stopped at the Cumberland County Civic Center. You can go online at dtoc.battleofthebands.com/radiationyear, register and vote for them up to once a day – though be forewarned, there are lots of other local bands in the running, so maybe spread the love around if you want, yeah?

Anyway, to make a long story short, Radiation Year worked really hard and recorded a great album. I have to hand it to them – they are not short on ambition, and so far, it appears to have paid off. I believe Chiasson when he says he hopes “Age of the Everglades” gives people a new perspective on a very narrow genre like hard-core.

“I think, and I hope, for hard-core that it’s a breath of fresh air,” he said.

Radiation Year will play at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 1, at the University of Maine at Augusta Student Union with Last Chance to Reason and Cambiata, and at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7, at 103 Ultra Lounge in Orono with the Killing Moon. Both shows are all ages. For more info, visit www.myspace.com/radiationyear. Emily Burnham can be reached at eburnham@bangordailynews.net.