Gerard Way's new solo album helped him battle his demons and depression.
The musician revealed that after his former band released hit LP 'The Black Parade', his morale was at an all time low and he should have quit the group.
After My Chemical Romance did part ways in March of last year, Gerard used songwriting as a form of "therapy" and his debut solo album 'Hesitant Alien' spawned.
Speaking to The Sun he explained: "This record didn't start as a solo album, it started as therapy. I didn't want My Chemical Romance to end just because I wanted to make a solo album. That's the story for many artists but not for me. The band was done after that album ('The Black Parade'). I wasn't following my art or listening to myself or else I would have known to stop them ... I was in a band I didn't want to be in anymore, doing something I didn't want to do anymore and I fell into a huge depression."
Producer Doug McKean advised Gerard to make music for the fun of it rather than using any other motivation.
"Doug said to me, 'Just make music because you want to, not because you feel you have to.' So I started making demos without thinking of an audience or what a successful album needed to be. It was me messing around with a lot of fuzz pedals and making music because I needed to because I was so depressed."
The rocker says the album has a "British punk and shoegazey" sound, but a David Bowie influence running throughout.
"People like Damon Albarn, Morrissey, PJ Harvey, Peter Gabriel and Bowie from the Berlin era. All the oddness that I tried to inject into this album came from Bowie's Berlin era."
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