With the global touring circuit effectively on ice since restrictions were imposed worldwide last March to combat the spread of coronavirus, My Chemical Romance’s carefully-managed comeback plans were thrown into complete disarray.
In January 2020 there was huge excitement as the reformed New Jersey emo kingpins announced an extensive European tour itinerary to include three huge summer shows in the UK at Stadium MK in Milton Keynes: one year on, everyone is just keeping fingers crossed that the quintet’s proposed summer 2021 tour, set to launch at the Eden Project in St. Austell, Cornwall on June 15, will go ahead as (re) scheduled.
Naturally, no-one is more keen to see MCR back on the road than the band members themselves. On December 20, one year to the day since My Chem played their first comeback show at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, guitarist Frank Iero unveiled a new tattoo commemorating the occasion, and expressed his hunger to step out in front of an audience again, urging MCR fans to “stay safe, and keep the faith”. In a new, exclusive interview with Louder, Iero tells Ali Shutler that the enforced delay has been “frustrating” but reveals that he’s been been far from idle during this unanticipated hiatus.
“I love being in the room with people and reacting to them immediately so it's been difficult for me to do Zoom meetings about a fucking part that would take two seconds to change if you were in the room together,” Iero laughs. “That gets frustrating. But I do enjoy working with people that maybe I wouldn't have had the opportunity to, if it was not for everybody working remotely. That's been really fun and definitely opened a lot of doors for me creatively.”
While it was a joy to see Iero backing The Distllers’ Brody Dalle on an unexpected cover of Annie Lennox’s Walking On Broken Glass in November, and a delight to see him collaborate with Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta and ex-Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Ben Weiman on a Misfits cover in August, the release of new original music from the guitarist on January 15, in the form of the EP, Heaven Is A Place, This Is A Place, from his side band Frank Iero And The Future Violents, was even more welcome. And the guitarist promises that we’ll be hearing much more from him as the year rolls on.
“As the next Frank Iero record, I have some stuff, I just don't know what it's gonna be yet, nothing I can break for you right now,” Iero says. I will say this though, at the moment I'm working on between four and five different projects, which is awesome but it's all spec. We're gonna do this thing, have fun with it and see where it goes. Will it ever see the light of day, who knows? Maybe not, but then maybe also everything will happen at the same fucking time and that'll be really stressful. I just don't know I’m afraid. I do know I'm keeping fairly busy, much to my wife's chagrin.”
To read much more from My Chemical Romance’s guitarist, check back for an exclusive Louder interview with Iero being posted on the site late today.
And you can see MCR’s revised summer 2021 touring plans here.
