Tag: gerard way smells real bad

AT TIMES IT FELT LIKE THE RECORD WAS TRYING TO KILL US.

BUT IT ONLY WANTED TO MAKE US BETTER.

It was really amazing to see the characters come to life in the songs, sometimes through guitar parts or sound effects, other times I would find myself singing in another voice, a different person…sometimes a woman and sometimes a soldier. I decided to chop off almost all of my hair, which had become long and matted again. I wanted to feel like the patient and I also wanted to strip away all of the color to my hair…I wanted it white, which I saw as the absence of life. This helped me get into character, like method acting.

As we tracked the story got tighter and tighter but also I noticed the layers started to strip away, the fiction and metaphor of everything started to fade and what was left by the end of the record was something very naked, something very honest and very obvious…

WE WERE THESE CHARACTERS. IT WAS OUR STORY WE WERE TELLING.

We walked around like zombies, not creating, not showering, not living. Some never left their rooms. I left my pyjama pants on for a week once, constantly fighting back the urge to just walk into the swimming pool and stand at the bottom until I couldn’t breathe. I would yell ‘I’m just gonna walk into that fucking swimming pool on day!’ We were all losing it. We had decided that we didn’t want to videotape any of the writing process and at this point we were glad we didn’t tape anything.