My Chemical Romance Reveal Secrets of New Album
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By Kevin O'Donnell on October 6, 2010 10:21 AM

Last December, My Chemical Romance were focused on writing and recording the follow-up to 2006's The Black Parade, the multi-platinum smash that established them as one of the decade's biggest new bands. Frontman Gerard Way had completed nearly seven songs, which were inspired by everything from Judas Priest and Def Leppard to the Hives and the Killers.

But then the band — Way, guitarist Ray Toro, guitarist Frank Iero, bassist Mikey Way, and drummer Bob Bryar — decided to start over from scratch. (Drummer Bob Bryar also split amicably from the group around the same time.) "The way we've been looking at it is instead of an album getting scrapped, it was just one long writing process," guitarist Ray Toro tells SPIN.com. "Some songs we just had to get out of our system and some of those songs we kept and reworked."

My Chem will reveal those years of hard work on their new album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, which hits stores November 22. Like Black Parade, My Chem regrouped with producer Rob Cavallo, although the record finds the band exploring new sonic territory, mixing their contemporary emo-punk sound with older influences like punk and psychedelic rock.

"We put up a lot of rules about the songs we could write and what the sound was supposed to be for this record," says Toro. "But Rob took all those walls down for us and was like 'You know what? The sky's the limit, just write great music and use your creativity.' He's a master at doing that."

As for a unifying theme, Toro says Way's lyrics focus on ideas of alientation and escape, and feature a group of outsider characters called the Killjoys. "The overall theme in the music is finding a sense of freedom and using creativity and art as the weapon, as opposed to worrying about the end result," says Toro, adding that the Killjoys are a loose interpretation of the band itself. "Some people are going to think it's a departure. That's the fun of being in the band, having the blessing to explore the music and try different things."

SPIN caught up with Toro to discuss four of the more experimental tracks on the album.

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MCR's latest is a uniquely American rock album, albeit one set in the dystopian future, in Bigger Than the Sound.
By James Montgomery

"Let me tell you 'bout the sad man/ Shut up and let me see your jazz hands."

Gerard Way sings that on "Na Na Na," the first single from My Chemical Romance's Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, and I mention it now because it's a pretty apt summation of the entire album, a throttling 50-odd minutes of big guitars, even bigger choruses and shiny, 23rd-century synthesizers that's long on jazz hands, fist pumps and all other manner of jubilant gesticulations, yet short on morose emotions ... or, really, any emotions that couldn't adequately be expressed without Dio-worthy devil horns or lighters thrust aloft.

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