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."
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