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From the MCRMY

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A Signed Epiphone Guitar by Frank Iero

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My Chemical Romance Get To Work On Non-Concept Album, Sort Of

From MTV.com

Well, at least now we know what the new My Chemical Romance album won’t sound like.

A few months back, when we spoke to MCR bassist Mikey Way about the “Batman” story he was writing for DC Comics, he mentioned that he and his bandmates had begun work in earnest on the follow-up to 2006′s Welcome to the Black Parade, but, while they’re all writing songs, he had no idea what the album would end up sounding like.

“So if, say, we wrote some songs that sound like Rick Springfield, a week later they’ve all turned into Children of Bodom songs,” he explained. “I know it’s going to be great — I just don’t know what it’s going to sound like. We’re going to be just as surprised as everyone else, believe me.”

And we did. So when we recently caught up with Mikey’s brother, MCR frontman Gerard Way, we asked if the new album was still in such a state of flux. His answer? Yes, but he’s at least got an idea of how he doesn’t want it to turn out.

“You know, we’ve made concepts for three albums now, so I think this one — at least from my standpoint — I want to go into it not thinking about a definite story. I said that during Parade, but I still think I had something to work out,” he said. “I think I had to get it out of my system, as far as writing concept records. I had to at least do one more before I stopped doing them. Obviously, they’ll always be cohesive though. The songs need to fit together, that’s what makes a great album.”

Way added that rather than focusing on a concept, he and the band are keeping it much simpler this time around — they’re just focusing on writing really killer, really loud rock songs.

“The one thing is we’ve never really captured that ‘live’ feeling. We’ve gone for sometimes more polish. We’ve obviously emulated bands like Queen in trying to get that classic, late-’70s glam sound, and we’ve gone for that at times, especially on the last record,” Way explained. “But then, when we’re playing this stuff live, it’s ultimately going to get more aggressive, so I think it’d be interesting to hear what the band sounds like recorded at least somewhat in those parameters of a live set.

“And that’s not to say it’ll all be distorted, who knows. I think you record it live viscerally, and the minute you put in the distortion, yeah, it’s going to sound ‘punk,’ “he continued. “You take it off and I don’t know what it sounds like then. The song we did for ‘Watchmen’ [a cover of Bob Dylan's 'Desolation Row'] in a lot of ways is a really good test-run or experiment, at least sonically.”

Of course, in keeping with the company line, Way said that there is no definite timetable for when or where My Chem will actually begin recording the new album … in fact, what with Way’s “Umbrella Academy” comic series having recently been green-lit for production and guitarist Frank Iero’s side project Leathermouth taking off, there seems to be even less time to be dedicated to the business of being MCR.

“Well, [guitarist] Ray [Toro] is coming out Sunday and … we may even sketch out a whole album together, which is something we used to like to try to do. We’ve had less and less time to sit down and try to do a skeleton of an album,” Way said. “It’s good to start doing that stuff, but once you start doing that you kind of paint yourself into a corner. Like, we finished mixing Black Parade, and then the next day we were on a plane off to Europe doing press. It was literally that quick. So I don’t think we want to go through that again. We don’t want some kind of time limit on us.”

Bauer shreds…

posted by Ray on Feb 18, 2009 10:50am

My Chemical Romance Album Won’t Be A ‘Kitchen Sink’ Affair

From MTV.com

There was a time, long before the multiplatinum records and the pancake makeup, before the Eisner Award-winning comics or the Dylan cover in the “Watchmen” film, when My Chemical Romance were just another band from New Jersey. They would like very much to get back to that time.

So that’s goal number one with their new album — the follow-up to the massively successful, massively ambitious Welcome to the Black Parade — which they’re currently writing in Los Angeles. They hope to get back to their roots — to make manic, fast-and-furious, spur-of-the-moment punk. And, above all, to keep it simple.

“When we had just finished Black Parade, I think doing that record made us feel like we could do everything. And so I think the way to top a record that already kind of does everything is to not do everything,” MCR frontman Gerard Way smiled. “I don’t think this is gonna be a ‘kitchen sink’ record. I think it’s going to get by on its musicianship and its own merits in the songs.

“And every record … I like to think they’re snapshots of what your band is at that moment, and this is really going to be that. I think there’s going to be lack of concept, I think it’s simply a snapshot, I think it’s going to be direct and very honest,” he continued. “It’s not going to be hiding behind a veil of fiction or uniforms and makeup anymore. … From the stuff we’ve been playing so far, just feels very pure. That’s the best way to describe it. People who were really big fans of our first record, they’ll find things they’re really going to love about the new material — and not because we sound like that first record at all, it’s because there’s a purity to it. There’s less happening.”

It’s a tactic they first learned while recording their version of Dylan’s “Desolation Row” for Zack Snyder’s upcoming “Watchmen” film: Stop thinking and just get busy rocking.

“From working on ‘Desolation Row’ … I think it was very natural. We just kind of did stuff and the song was there. There was no over-thinking,” Way explained. “[But, having said that] we’re not going to make a retro record at all. It will sound like a modern rock record, but I think we would like to try to redefine that, what that actually means. By saying it sounds like a modern rock record, it’ll sound new — I don’t think it’ll sound like what’s on the radio right now.”

And to that point, though it may sound like MCR are trying hard to strip away the rather, uh, grandiose leanings of The Black Parade, they’ve still got the swagger of a band that’s moved units and toured the globe. They’ve been surveying the musical landscape that’s appeared in their absence, and they’re not very pleased by what they see. Take, for example, the (working) title of one of their new songs: “New Hair, Same Sh–.”

“It’s about having new hair, but it’s the same sh–. That’s the concept,” Way laughed. “I think the new album is going to be a response to the two years of touring on Parade. A reaction to what’s happening right now — everything that we’re not a part of — and a response to it.”

My current favorite cereal…

posted by Ray on Feb 18, 2009 2:03am

Look, let’s cut to the chase here. This cereal is fucking fantastic tasty. Some cereals have a lot of bells and whistles. You know that Basic 4 cereal? I used to eat it when I was a few years younger. There were like 20 ingredients in that. You had 3 different kind of flakes, cranberries, almonds, walnuts, toasty oats…man now that I think about it that cereal was pretty delicious. At any rate, there was a lot going on.

life (OG lower case) Cinnamon is as basic as it gets. You can eat it straight it up like I do. A whole grain oat in the shape of a crispy chex, with perfect crunch and a sublime finish. Just look at that delicious spoonful. Any cereal that can make two adolescent girls as happy as that has to be good. Just look at their smiles people, genuine. To top it off, you got Ben Franklin-looking Quaker up there watching down on the whole scene, as if to say “Eat my delicious morsels, and you shall find peace.”

Well I did Quaker, and I’m peaceful as a light rain.