My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way Shares Two More Unreleased Demos

Earlier this month, My Chemical Romance‘s Gerard Way uploaded four solo tunes to Soundcloud as part of a new project called Distraction or Despair which has seen him digging through the archives to share rarities and demos that were never officially released.

“With all this uncertainty I just wanted to start uploading some unreleased stuff. Just so people can check it out and have something to listen to,” he wrote at the time.

“I’m calling all of this stuff Distraction Or Despair, since that seems to be the two things I keep shifting between. Probably a lot of other people too.”

Now, Way has dipped back into the archives and shared two more instrumental tracks – titled ‘PS Earth’ and ‘Crate Amp_01’ – recorded with producer Doug McKean.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Hey all, here are a couple more unreleased demos. Link in bio and description below. Hope that you are doing well. ⠀ ⠀
 PS Earth This one was recorded at the tail end of the Hesitant Alien demo sessions, just Doug and I. I liked it well enough at the time, felt kind of 90’s, didn’t end up putting any vocals on it though. I like the bridge a lot. Looking back at the whole thing, I like it, but not sure if I’m going to finish it. Guitar, bass by me. Programmed drums by Doug. Crate Amp_01 This is the start of the Crate amp jam. Like I mentioned in the other post about the Crate amp jams, I wasn’t sure when Doug was in record-mode, because I was in the live room with the amp, so I just started playing. I feel like doing more of these Crate amp jams. I think we can get it to sound even more messed up. At one point, I think in a later track, Doug tried to do this thing where he put a glass bottle over one of the mics, to make it sound more messed up and kind of underwater. Oh and when I bought this amp, I also bought an old Peavy, which is another kind of amp that is cheap and you saw a lot of metal bands using in the 80’s. That one sounds pretty messed up too, and I think it also has built in distortion. The amps sound pretty different from each other though. I can’t remember which guitar I was playing for certain, but I am pretty sure it was the BC Rich Mockingbird Lindsey got me for Christmas, which I love. BC Rich is another one of these companies gear heads get snobby about, and the 80’s saw a lot of metal bands, all kinds of metal bands, use them. Thrash, hair metal, just all kinds of metal. The Warlock was everywhere. Years ago I heard about this successful musician buying up a ton of a certain kind of guitar, to corner the market on them, so I thought I would do what he was doing, but in the complete opposite direction, and buy up a ton of guitars no one really wanted and that wouldn’t really increase in value. Just to be a clown. I ended up not doing that, as that would have been a gross misuse of funds simply to make a joke, but I did eventually get one. I like the shape a lot. It sounds metal af.

A post shared by Gerard Way (@gerardway) on Apr 22, 2020 at 1:19pm PDT

Way expanded on both in an Instagram post, saying ‘PS Earth’ was recorded at the tail end of the recording sessions for Way’s 2014 debut album Hesitant Alien. “I liked it well enough at the time, felt kind of 90’s, didn’t end up putting any vocals on it though. I like the bridge a lot. Looking back at the whole thing, I like it, but not sure if I’m going to finish it,” he said.

‘Crate Amp_01’ is one of around five tracks that sees Way “messing around” with a low-budget Crate amplifier he purchased.

“We would turn the amp distortion on, and then run a distortion pedal through it, to see how fucked up we could get it,” Way explained. “This is just me playing guitar meandering through ideas, sloppily. Maybe some of these riffs will become songs.”

Check out both tracks below, and see more over at Way’s Soundcloud page here.