After putting the final touches on their second album, There’s No Place Like Home, Warsaw-based punk rock outfit Corporate Circus feel as if “there’s a world of difference” between their current sound and talent on the new album and their previous offering, Help Wanted. “We’re almost ashamed to call the first album our own,” says lead singer Ryan Bettinger. “Everyone has done a lot of growing up since then. We’ve also learned our instruments better.”

The band will release There’s No Place Like Home on May 3 at the opening night of Sneaky Pete’s new all-ages club, The Basement.

Home features a cover depicting a mock Wizard of Oz motif, complete with yellow brick road, Dorothy’s slippers and witch’s wand. Added in are the feet of, presumably, the five band members and the necks of a guitar and bass.

The image and the album are meant as a statement on the band’s humble “huck nut Indiana” roots, says drummer Jeremy Isaacs. “We’ve been doing this on our own since day one,” adds Bettinger. “We were never the cool kids. This is our way of saying we’re not too happy with where we came from.”

One of the new album’s tracks, “Disturbed,” which is getting some airplay on X102.3-FM, highlights the band members’ apparent disgust with their hometown and small town America in general. “The basic premise is hating your home town and wanting to get out of it,” Bettinger says. “We know we can do a lot better outside of this town.”

“Disturbed” will likely get more regular rotation from the station once a radio edit is finished. The uncut song is laced with all of the typical seven words you can’t say on the radio, Bettinger says.

The new album features Corporate Circus’s signature song, “Fool’s Paradise.” “Paradise” spent 43 days on X102.3-FM’s Alternative “9@9” segment and nearly three months on the station’s countdown in general, Bettinger says.

“Being on the same countdown as all these major acts and songs is pretty cool to think that we can actually stand a chance with them with where we’re at right now,” he adds.

“Fool’s Paradise,” Bettinger says, “is not the strongest song off the record. We started getting sick of it for a while. But later we decided it was actually a really good song. Nobody really has a favorite song on the album. Everybody likes the whole project as a whole. Right now, most people are judging us off of one song. We don’t know how people will judge the whole record. People are going to get a different view once they hear the whole record.”

The song may soon be the focus of a new project by filmmaker Nate Weaver. Weaver, a Warsaw native, has worked on videos for MTV2 and punk band Grand Royal. “He approached us about doing a video for ‘Fool’s Paradise,’ ” Isaacs says. “He was amazed that, what he calls ‘a band of our caliber’ came from huck nut Indiana. We’re not exactly sure what we’re going to do with it. But we know that it will poke fun at small-town Indiana. More than likely it will be shot in Warsaw.”

Bettinger and his Corporate Circus band mates, including Isaacs, lead guitarist Corbin Arnett, bassist Josh Bloom and rhythm guitarist Jon Shoes, are focusing their efforts on setting up a “really good distribution” network for the record. “We’re really going to pump it in Indiana,” he says. “Home” will be available at every Karma Records in Indiana, as well as Wooden Nickel Music stores and Sam Goody. The Sam Goody chain, Bettinger says, “approached us at the Extreme Essentials release party,” and told the band it would sell its album. “It threw us off a little,” he says. “To have someone approach you and want to sell your record is really impressive.”

Corporate Circus are betting on the album being a success locally. They pressed approximately 2,000 copies of Home. Record stores will take 1,300 copies of the CD once it is shipped.

A tour to support the album “is looking more and more like a possibility” for the end of the summer, Bettinger says. “We’ve had quite a few people bugging us about touring. We definitely want to hit the road and show the world what we’re made of.”

Presently, Corporate Circus “are loving every minute” of their success. That success includes playing before 1,100 fans at Picasso’s as well as at a show at the Memorial Coliseum with national punk bands Thursday, Small Brown Bike, Good Riddance, Rozell and Rise Again,

The band’s success has spurred record label interest. At least 14 labels, Bettinger says, are interested in the band’s music. Although he opted not to say which labels had contacted the band, he said that having record labels in droves contact him and his mates “definitely caught us off guard. Since we’ve been together as Corporate Circus we’ve solicited to record labels before. When we sent our material out before. we always got a pre-fabricated rejection letter. But this is mind-blowing. We’ve got a lot of label interest but we’re not into negotiations right now. We have several coming out to a show in Indianapolis and one in Warsaw. No one has actually thrown anything on the table yet.”

Bettinger attributes the interest primarily to the success of “Fool’s Paradise.”

“The song started it. But we’ve sent out other songs and they were interested in them, too. Many were interested in ‘Disturbed.’ “

Look for a feature in the News-Sentinel on Corporate Circus and the new all-ages club, The Basement, during the week of May 3. The band’s web site, www.corporatecircus.org, which recently had a professional facelift, features more news and show information.

In addition to the May 3 show at the Basement, Corporate Circus will play May 10 in Warsaw at the county fairgrounds, and May 31 at the Emerson Theatre in Indianapolis. Corporate Circus will open for national act Ultimate Fakebook at that show.