Trapt is the latest in a long line of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? stories in the music industry.

Five years ago, the alt-metal quartet from Los Gatos, Calif., sold 1.6 million copies of its self-titled debut album on Warner Bros. Records, fueled by the Billboard modern-rock chart toppers “Headstrong” and “Still Frame.” The follow-up album, “Someone in Control,” sold a respectable 500,000 copies in 2005.
By the time the group started work on its third album, “Only Through the Pain,” its relationship with Warner Bros. was so strained, the label wouldn’t return e-mails from the band.

“We didn’t like the situation,” singer-guitarist Chris Taylor Brown said recently. “We asked them to let us off the label. There was no official parting of the ways; we just said, ‘We’re leaving,’ and there was no response, so we were out of there.”

Brown and his band mates — bassist Peter Charell, drummer Aaron “Monty” Montgomery and new guitarist Robb Torres — shopped their “Only Through the Pain” demos around to different labels. The winner in the sweepstakes was Eleven Seven Records, founded by Mötley Crüe manager Allen Kovac and overseen by Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx. The label is, oddly enough, distributed by Warner Bros.

Preceded by the single “Who’s Going Home With You Tonight?” the new album will be in stores Aug. 5. Fans can hear a sampling when Trapt joins the Crüefest at Tampa’s Ford Amphitheatre at 5 p.m. today. Headliner Mötley Crüe is bringing Papa Roach, Buckcherry and Sixx:A.M.

“Eleven Seven is perfect for us,” Brown said. “We have a lot more independence. As far as musically, we went up to Canada to work on the album with our producer, GGGarth Richardson, and there was no label people there at all.
“Warner had no clue what they were doing. Now, we’re a band that’s in their mid-20s, we write good songs and the album’s going to be very successful. Radio stations that supported us through the first two albums are playing our new single. So we’re going to have the last laugh.”

The somewhat-amicable departure of lead guitarist Simon Ormandy at the beginning of the year didn’t even derail Trapt’s plans.

As for Crüefest, Brown predicts “soccer moms throwing their thongs on stage. It’ll be a wide range of people. I love it when people bring their kids and they get lost in the whole rock ’n’ roll moment as well. It’s so cool.”

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