Here's some news to make any My Chemical Romance fan wear black, if they weren't already: Gerard Way says there won't be another MCR album for quite awhile.
"I think it will be a couple of years before there's another record," says the MCR frontman, on the phone from New York last week. "I would say about 2009."
Cue the tear-smeared eyeliner.
Way says the band will go on a hiatus of sorts "to really evaluate what the band is, to reshape it yet again," following its 2006 epic "The Black Parade." That album, an ambitious rock opera about life, death, hope and fear, established the New Jersey five-piece as one of today's most ambitious and grandiose bands.
But don't fret yet -- touring commitments will keep the band on the road for the better part of the next year, and the band plays DTE Energy Music Theatre tonight as part of Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution tour.
The pairing of the rap-rockers and MCR doesn't seem natural at first -- don't Linkin Park fans beat up My Chem fans? -- but Way says the billing is logical.
"Along the lines of their new material, I think it makes a lot of sense," says Way, 30. "I think they took a giant risk and, creatively, they really pushed themselves, and I think they desired the same things out of this record we desired out of ours."
To wit, Way saw "The Black Parade," which has sold 1.2 million copies in the U.S., as a way to achieve "total separation from us and a lot of modern music, especially a lot of genre-specific modern music." (He means emo, which he calls "garbage." wink
Mission accomplished.
"The Black Parade," MCR's third album and the follow-up to 2004's "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge," was one of 2006's most acclaimed releases, combining classic and modern-rock sensibilities. Equal parts Bowie, Queen, Green Day and Broadway, it put them on a plain altogether different from their peers.
Like most of MCR's output, it is death-obsessed, a byproduct of Way's Catholic upbringing.
But Way says, "I might be through with that subject." He looks forward to refocusing the band "and come back with completely fresh ears and say, 'What do we now want to say?'"
Meantime, Way says what he wants in his new Dark Horse comic "The Umbrella Academy," a six-parter that debuts Sept. 19. It follows seven children raised by a space alien to save the world. Way describes it as "The Doom Patrol" meets "The Royal Tenenbaums."
He's writing it on tour, where he says he and his band have got a second wind after nearly bottoming out last winter. He hopes the energy carries through to the band's next record, a long way off though it may be.
"You make a record if you have something to say," Way says, in between puffs on a cigarette. "And I think I have at least one more great thing to say."
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