It hasn’t been easy being a Taking Back Sunday fan in recent years.The New York post-hardcore band hit it big with the indie crowd in 2002 with Tell All Your Friends, a raw, spit-in-your-face album that featured several lyrical jabs at fellow Long Islanders Brand New, and managed to do the unthinkable–it was a follow-up that was just as good or better than the first. Unfortunately, the ingredients went sour, and several key aspects of the band jumped ship. Guitarist and vocalist John Nolan and bassist Shaun Cooper left to start Straylight Run (which had a brief taste of fame with the single “Existentialism on Prom Night”) and former guitarist and singer Fred Mascherino left to start one of the great musical abominations since Creed–The Color Fred. Luckily, the emo stars have aligned and all is right in the world once more. TBS’s self-titled fifth studio album hits stores today, and after seven years, Nolan and Cooper are back to (hopefully) salvage whatever mess the last two TBS albums created. “Faith (When I Let You Down),” the first single from the new album, says a lot for the growth of the band, since it would have been easy to release a Tell All Your Friends: Part II (as many critics feared) and just pretend to have all the woes and worries that accompany being 18 years old. Instead, the eponymous LP plays like a confident, alt-rock hybrid by a bunch of men who have years of experience under their belt and a story to tell. And +7 points for sounding nothing like The Color Fred. Taking Back Sunday’s new CD can be purchased for $7.99 at Amazon. Students who have a .edu e-mail address can also sign up for a free year of Amazon Prime and have the CD sent with two-day shipping for free.Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.