| MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE - Rebellion, Right [and wrongs], & [new] Recordings. |
| Written by Shahlin Graves / Q&A: SUPPLIED |
| Saturday, 23 October 2010 23:43 |
 PART I l PART II Rebellion, Right [and wrongs], & [new] Recordings... GERARD WAY: If there's any rebellion in the record, it's a rebellion against ourselves and kind of against - definitely against being assimilated into modern rock culture and cutting your hair and looking respectable and getting into your thirties and like - all right, we're gonna be this kind of rock band, because that's what people are grooming us to be. It's a rebellion against that very thing, and so there's no rebellion against the corporation, though. I see the Killjoys as really just survivalists. I also like to think that Better Living Industries isn't necessarily the bad guys and neither are the Killjoys. It's like they both do really messed up things, you know? I think maybe in the second or third video, we're gonna be shooting cops. It's pretty colourful in that way. There's no black or white. Yeah, so I don't feel like they're really fighting against any, but, I guess we could talk about some of the characters. Grant Morrison plays a character called Korse. And he's basically the chief exterminator. And he goes out in the desert and cleans it up 'cause there's this city called Battery City where everything is really nice and clean. And they send people like Korse into the desert to exterminate, basically, the insects and the filth. And he has this unit of soldiers with him called Draculoids, which are basically a higher unit than police even and, literally, we're making this up as we go on. FRANK IERO: Yeah, I think, like it's more fighting against an idea, right? Than any one entity... GERARD: Absolutely. It's wholly fighting against the idea of the corporate cleanup. And what better way, like, who's actually kind of more suited to do or say that than a band that's actually within a corporate system? And we're not bagging on it, but there's other kinds of corporate cleanup we don't like, like that assimilation into modern rock. It's definitely a battle against an idea like he's saying. Rather, there's no evil tyrants, there's nobody throwing Molotov cocktails. FRANK: You have to be artistically true to yourself. Just, I think the biggest testament to that for us was we wrote a record and felt like: all right, this is par, you know? This is great, and people were saying that it's really good, but when we looked at back it, it wasn't something that we were 100 percent happy with. And if you're not, then you shouldn't put that out. And so, it's constantly striving for greatness. Always, not second-guessing yourself to the point where you fell, but, being your own worst critic about things... and really pushing yourself. I mean, it's weird. We'll write songs and sometimes they're great songs, but if it's not, we're not, reminding ourselves - we don't feel comfortable, I think. RAY TORO: Right. It's got to speak to you, yeah. That's it. GERARD: That's the word. RAY: I think from the first recordings we had done, there were, even the record he [Frank] was talking about that we kind of, that we scrapped. There were like three or four songs that spoke to us, out of those. And when it came time to re-approach those, we - you kinda had to - we miss them. And that's the reason why we brought them back. But then when we brought them back, we did have to kind of do some work and kind of re-invent them a little bit for us to make them fresh. And, you know, it's always the thing. We'll write - we love to write songs and we love to write music and then - but, you don't always knock them out of the park, you know? And I think the ones that do end up on the record are the ones that really stand out and mean something special for all of us. GERARD: Yeah, I think one day we will release that stuff. I think it'd be important because it happened, you know? At the same time, I feel like, I don't really think about them as two records anymore. I think about the record being 'Danger Days', and what it took to get to 'Danger Days' was just making a lot of songs and a lot of recordings which is actually something that even kind of happened on Parade. Like, we went in with, we did pre-production, but then when we got in, I think our ability to change the script immediately and/or write new material and scrap old material was what made that record great. And I kind of feel it was a longer process, but it was a similar process. FRANK: Definitely worth it. GERARD: But, sometimes as a writer, you'll hit that thing where you write, like, I don't know, an amazing short story or a haiku or an article where you're like you've nailed it immediately and that happens too - just, we all know as artists, that doesn't happen that often. It's like a rare case. 'Na Na Na' is a great example of a song that was, I don't think anything changed really at all from like when we first played it. We added a part and that's it. So sometimes you get the magic, but you can't chase that. You got to kind of work on stuff and sometimes it may feel like 3:00 A.M. and you're grinding, but, you got to do that to get there too. MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE's new album 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys' is released in New Zealand on November 22nd - features the lead-single 'Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)'. Find out how you could win the chance to hear the new album eleven days before it hits stores HERE - as well as about our ART IS THE WEAPON event. |
