It probably hasn't been on your playlists since the Napster days of yore, but Alien Ant Farm is alive and well. With a new album intended for release this summer, the band is performing at 9 p.m. Friday at the Hard Rock on the Strip in hopes of reviving fans’ love of hits like “Movies” and “Smooth Criminal” and introducing their sound to a new generation.

What is next for Alien Ant Farm? When can we expect a new album?

We’ve been writing a record right now and meeting with interesting people about who is going to do this record. We’re hoping for a summer release at the latest. A couple months ago, Metallica asked us to play the Sonisphere festival in England with them, so we were really excited about that. We did some touring with them back in the day. One cool thing about playing with Metallica was it gave us a chance to see all our old booking agents and seeing how the crowd reacted so well to us still.

I’ve read several accounts of how your band name was developed, but can you tell us the real story?

It was just a tongue-in-cheek idea that our guitar player thought of. If this world had been created by aliens and they kind of went away to watch us make it work or destroy ourselves kind of like a kid does with an ant farm, like if the world was a giant ant farm for aliens. It wasn’t meant to be so deep, but it kind of is if you think about it.

What was behind the idea naming your first, underground release Greatest Hits?

It was another tongue-in-cheek thing like the name of the band. We weren’t really cocky by any means, but at the same time, we had always heard that your first release is usually some of your cooler songs because you have so much time to write these songs. When you move to your second and third albums, you’re touring and you have like four months to write an album. The odds of it sounding as good as your first that you got to spend so much time on are nil to none. Every now and then a kid will show up to a concert with our original album and ask us to sign it. It’s cool to see it getting treated like a baseball card.

What was it like having a platinum album right out of the gate?

It was kind of strange. We wanted to come up kind of slowly and that was kind of squashed, but you can’t bitch about something blowing up in a good way. We didn’t intend for “Smooth Criminal” to be a big single. It was our choice to put it on the album, but Dreamworks just kind of threw it out there, unbeknownst to us. We were in Europe and “Movies” had been our first single and I was talking to a friend here who said our song was no. 1 on KROQ. ... I remember thinking, “Does this suck or is this cool?” We were in it for longevity and we were afraid that song would give us a stigma, for better or for worse.

Have you ever considered leaving your recording contract to release your music independently, especially in the wake of the Geffen debacle in 2005 where they refused to release your finished album for over a year?

We don’t even know where we stand with that label. They put out this compilation of songs from three of our records. I don’t even know the name of the album. We’re writing a record right now, and if they want to put it out, fine. If not, we would love to just take our record and see if there’s someone else who wants to help us with it. We’re in a unique position because we’re sort of a household name, but we’re not a big band, either.