After My Chemical Romance's grueling two-year tour in support of their hit third album, The Black Parade, the quintet put the band on hiatus and retreated to their personal lives to recover. Frontman Gerard Way married and had his first child, daughter Bandit Lee. 

It was the the chance to cover Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" for the 2009 blockbuster/graphic novel adaptation of Watchmen that pried Way and his bandmates out of their houses, and found them beginning to formulate their next move. "It was a good test to play around with where we might potentially go," Way tells SPIN.com. "We started with the Sex Pistols and then decided to go back further, before punk. What was before punk that was punk? So there's the MC5 and the Stooges, and that Detroit sound."
 

And those are just a few of the touchstone bands whose influences surface on MCR's as-yet-untitled fourth album, due in the Spring. Hints of Judas Priest, Def Leppard, and the Hives permeate seven new songs previewed for SPIN.com: "Death Before Disco," "Save Yourself," "Trans Am," "Only Hope," "Light Behind Your Eyes," "Black Dragon Fighting Society," and "L.A. Heavy."

And while Gerard is still writing songs to stir the jilted, with his typically snide worldview intact, these tunes reveal a band having a damn good time.

We caught up with Way to talk about the album, its roots in the band's home state of New Jersey -- and even a certain MTV reality show that's filmed there.

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