Fall Out Boy New Songs Recorded with Ryan Adams are Punk/Hardcore Influenced

Fall Out Boy have revealed in a new interview that the tracks they recorded with Ryan Adams recently were influenced by late-70s, early-80s punk and hardcore.

An excerpt from the interview can be found below.

Do you see these recordings existing in antithesis to Save Rock and Roll, or more of an exercise that’s going public?

PW: I think it was an exercise, but I do think it’s definitely the antithesis of Save Rock and Roll. Kids can say whatever, like, “Oh, where’s the guitars if you’re gonna call it Save Rock and Roll?” And there was a part of us that really wanted to withhold that. Rock and Roll needs to be challenged right now. The most Rock and Roll thing you could do is do what, like, Skrillex is doing right now. It felt good to get in there and make some noise that was what people would have thought of as standard “Rock and Roll.”

Joe Trohman: People would have expected a bunch of remixes after the album. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but this is not what people expected us to do, and that’s exciting and fun, to flip people on their head, so to speak. Also, one aspect of this that is a continuation of Save Rock and Roll was that it was an exercise in not doing as many layers of things. This is even a further distillation of that. It’s like a Black Flag record where it’s like, there’s very few tracks and everything that’s there is what’s there.

I feel like when you’re doing promo for your record, you’re structuring your time in a way that’s not conducive to coming up with something you’re happy with for the next record.

PW: No. It’s really hard to be creative on a schedule, especially a schedule that’s doing interviews in Germany.
JT: It’s a good thing, but there’s nothing new and fresh in that process.
PW: That’s why it was fun to just, like, do the songs. I’m glad that people will get to hear them, at the same time when we were making them it was like, “Wow, this is literally just fun to do.”
JT: It was a hangout where music got recorded. I think it’ll be left up to people as far as how it gets interpreted. Like, some dumb songs we did or a collection of songs they could call a record. We get to leave this up to our fans, or non-fans even.

What was the vibe you were going for?

JT: Misfits, Black Flag, Descendents, Dag Nasty, anything real late-70s, early-80s punk and hardcore stuff was influential in the creation of the music, and I think even the lyrical content too. That was the inspiration behind the entire session—to emulate the stuff that we grew up on, and the stuff that Ryan grew up on. We all really connected much there and were able to volley ideas back and forth. It wasn’t a forced interaction.

Does it kind of feel weird to have to do interviews about this thing that you did for fun and now suddenly you’re having to justify why it exists?

PW: Maybe the world will spin it a different way, but I’m guessing I won’t be at, like KISS FM talking about these songs. For me, those are the interviews that get tedious because I end up having to talk about the pop culture stuff of the day.
JT: We’re privileged to have people to want to ask us about anything we do, so it’s not worth complaining about. But it’s more fun to talk about something new. Especially about this. Talking about something that’s fun is actually fun.