MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Pete Wentz says talk of Fall Out Boy’s demise has been blown out of proportion — but he isn’t sure when the rock band will performing together again.

Earlier this week, lead singer Patrick Stump told Spin.com that the group was done after Wentz tweeted that he didn’t see a future for the platinum band.

But on Friday, Wentz said band members are just doing things apart and it’s not clear where their future lies.

“We just haven’t had the time to say anything. All I have been able to do is say, ‘Man, I miss doing Fall Out Boy,’ and I got to a better place hanging out with my son,” the bassist said of his infant son Bronx.

“Now I’m OK if Fall Out Boy comes back or doesn’t come back. Like, if it’s fun for everyone to do again, we’re going to do it … I just want it to be authentic when we come back,” said Wentz, in town for Super Bowl festivities.

Though he was at a Venus Williams rooftop party to DJ on Friday afternoon, he said he couldn’t see himself doing music seriously on his own: “I don’t know that I’m really cut out to be a solo artist. It’s never really been an aspiration of mine.”

Wentz said he has e-mailed Stump and the two are still cool with each other.

“We just wanted to talk about how blown out of proportion it’s gotten. It’s to the point where we’re gonna make ‘I Quit Fall Out Boy’ T-shirts, just goofing around about it,” he said. “We don’t want any animosity about it at all.”

Source: Variety

By James Montgomery

Over the past week, Mark Hoppus and Pete Wentz have rekindled their Twitter relationship (the same passionate affair that gave us the famed “Octo-Drive” last year), penning a series of odes to one another that mentioned “crazy-ass sandwiches” and, more notably, some mysterious new songs the two were collaborating on.

The tweets had fans of Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy salivating. With both bands in between projects at the moment (will this be the year we finally get the new Blink record?), speculation was rampant about what the two were up to. Well, we have the answer.

In an e-mail to MTV News, Wentz revealed that he and Hoppus had completed a song for the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s upcoming “Alice in Wonderland,” the same soundtrack that features a new song from All Time Low.

“We did a song for ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ [and we] might do a few more depending on when [Mark] goes in with Blink. [It] sounds nothing like Blink or Fall Out Boy. Mark understands songwriting on a completely different level. It’s awesome to have a chance to sit in a room with him and watch him work out a melody.”

Wentz added that, though he and Hoppus plan to record more songs, this isn’t the beginning of some new supergroup. It’s more like two friends getting together and jamming. After all, both of them have rather open schedules at the moment.

“It’s just for fun. It’s not a band or even a project at this state,” Wentz wrote. “I think between me getting Starbucks on TMZ and him gearing up for a summer of Blink, we have a lot on our hands.”

A spokesperson for Walt Disney Records — who will be releasing the soundtrack — told MTV News that at the moment, no track list has been confirmed but an announcement will be made “in the coming weeks.”

Source: MTV

By William Goodman

Fall Out Boy is on indefinite hiatus, but drummer Andy Hurley is busier than ever!

In addition to the Damned Things, his heavy metal band with members of Anthrax and Every Time I Die, the 29-year-old sticksman is working on another project: Burning Empires, a hardcore quintet featuring Stuart Ross, Ryan Morgan, and Kyle Johnson of Misery Signals, plus Matt Mixon, formerly of 7 Angels 7 Plagues. They’re all Milwaukee natives (and housemates!) with one ambition: to deliver their political message hard, fast, and loud.

Listen to Burning Empires’ new song, “Accomplice,” below.

Like Misery Signals and 7 Angels 7 Plagues, Burning Empires rip out a heavy, furious sound with thundering double kick drums, screeching electric guitars, and Morgan’s vicious screams. But with “Accomplice” — a song off the band’s early 2010 EP, Heirs of the Soil, to be released via their own Fuck City label — there’s an added element: a scathing message about the U.S. government’s war against animal and environmental activists.

Speaking exclusively to SPIN.com, Hurley, a devout vegan and follower of anarcho-primitivism, discussed the new band — and its message:

“This is a band I’ve always wanted to do with these guys, who have been best friends for about as long as Pete [Wentz] has been my best friend — over 10 years,” he said. “Burning Empires satisfies a heavier, more pissed off side of me that has been waiting to come out, and the politics of the band are so important to me. They’re issues for which I’ve wanted to have a musical outlet for years.”

Ryan Morgan agreed: “['Accomplice'] is a song about the guilt of existing in an ecologically destructive system,” from which “there is virtually no escape.”

“And should someone choose to take action,” he added, “they’re facing a disproportionate and heavy-handed response from the government. The FBI has labeled the animal rights and environmental movements as the ‘No. 1 Domestic Terrorist threat.’ It’s horrifying and it’s bizarre and backwards.”

Source: Spin

By: Daniel Kreps

There’s another new supergroup of sorts on the horizon: two members of Fall Out Boy are using their time away from the band to provide riffs and beats for a new heavy metal side project called the Damned Things. FOB guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley have teamed with Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Rob Caggiano, Every Time I Die’s Keith Buckley and bassist David Karon in the new band, which Ian describes to Rock Sound as “Kyuss meeting Thin Lizzy.”

According to Rock Sound, the Damned Things have already written and demoed 15 songs with the hope of entering the studio in December. “It’s super fun and it’s something that we do totally take seriously because we love the music we’ve created,” Ian said, describing new song “A Great Reckoning” as worthy of “any Thin Lizzy record.” The band’s roots can be traced back to at least October 2008, when the Damned Things’ MySpace page was created. Judging by the comments on that page, a Damned Things song was initially posted there but has since been deleted.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, after years of constantly recording and touring, Fall Out Boy are going on a hiatus — even though Wentz told RS it was more like an indefinite vacation — but Trohman and Hurley won’t be catching up on R&R during the break, instead taking the opportunity to step out of Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz’s shadows. “People think of Fall Out Boy and they think of Pete Wentz and Patrick,” Ian told Rock Sound, “These two guys, man, they’re fucking hardcore dudes. Joe writes some amazing riffs.”

Source: The Rolling Stone