Fall Out Boy fans will have to wait for their “Mania.”
Though the group originally intended to release its seventh studio album in conjunction with the just-started tour that bears its name, the group decided it wasn’t yet finished with the project and decided to delay it until January. But the tour is proceeding, with 14 previous years of favorites such as “Sugar We’re Goin’ Down,” “Dance, Dance,” “Centuries,” “Uma Thurman” and more to rest on.
That said, bassist Pete Wentz promises that the quartet will be offering a taste of “Mania” to those who turn out for the shows…
* Wentz, 38, acknowledges by phone that it’s being on a tour for an album that hasn’t come out yet, but Fall Out Boy is OK with that. “There’s part of us that’s like, ‘Well, we probably should have name it something different,'” the bassist says with a laugh. “It’s one of those things where we made the decision to push it back on our own. I think it would be different if it was a decision that was not in our hands, so then we’d feel like we had to make certain changes. But since it’s in our hands we can do what we want. We can still play the songs that we want, so we’re going to play three or four songs off it. It’s within our control.”
* And if nothing else, Wentz adds, Fall Out Boy’s new show is “the biggest production that we’ve probably ever done as a band. It’s super visual. It’s still based on the album because I made the visuals before we finished the album. We live in a hip-hop world, a dance world, so it’s cool to have a couple of rock bands that are played on the radio and also can play in arenas. That’s what the staging’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a big rock show.”
* “Mania,” meanwhile, is “done,” according to Wentz. The group worked with a variety of producers on the set and has already released three singles – the EMD-influenced “Young And Menace,” “Champion” and “The Last Of The Real Ones.” “I think of the last two records (2013’s ‘Save Rock And Roll’ and 2015’s ‘American Beauty/American Psycho’) as kind of one album cycle. Sonically they’re very similar,” Wentz explains. “I think (‘Mania’) pushes the ball forward.’Young And Menace’ is the most extreme; That’s to me like when you hard reset your computer and you attempt to get it working again. And then ‘Champion’ is probably more what people could have expected from the last album. I think the album’s just between those for the most part. There’s some weird stuff, but I don’t think anything’s much weirder than ‘Young And Menace’ and I don’t think there’s anything as straight down the middle as ‘Champion,’ either.”
* As for “Mania” as a title, Wentz explains that, “I think we live in a manic time. I think that people often think that mania is just happy, the opposite of depression. It isn’t, really. It stars with those feelings, but then it snowballs into something else like paranoia, egomaniacal behavior, not sleeping, violence. I think we live in those times. We live in a manic time period. I think it’s a reaction to what we live in now.”
* That said, Wentz says Fall Out Boy isn’t trying to forward a specific political agenda, either. “We’ve never been a band that’s like Rise Against,” he says. “We’re friends with them and we share a lot of the same views, but it’s never been an over thing. I’ve never been a shove-it-down-people’s throats kind of guy. You’re often speaking in a bubble; You’re not talking to people you actually need to talk to, you’re talking to people who have the same views as yourself. So where Fall Out Boy fits is taking this generation of kids and talking to them and engaging with them to help get them thinking and acting. That’s what Fall Out Boy’s job is.”
IF YOU GO
Fall Out Boy performs at Wells Fargo Center on Sunday, Oct. 29. Concert is at 7 p.m. For ticket information, check https://falloutboy.com/tour
