Gerard Way recently sat down to discuss the complexity of creating great albums like The Black Parade, writing The Umbrella Academy and more.

From revealing how Dungeons & Dragons taught him how to tell stories to building new worlds through My Chemical Romance, catch Way opening up with Dustin Kensrue on the Carry The Fire Podcast below.

“I think there’s a bit of safety that comes with being a character,” Way explains on the podcast. “Obviously I was looking up to my heroes when I was constructing that. I was looking at David Bowie, especially around The Black Parade. Early Black Parade stuff was basically, ‘What if death had a rock band?’ and it obviously changed from that and we all became death in a way, the whole band.”

Diving into his character during such an iconic moment in MCR’s history, Way opens up about the “healthy disdain” he got to portray during the album’s era.

“The character I was during Black Parade was fun. In an entertaining way, there was this level of disdain you would have for your audience playing as The Black Parade but it was, to me, a healthy kind because you were just playing really. I thought that was a fun aspect of that character. There’s a lot of you in the character. I always saw the characters that I played as some aspect of myself turned up to twelve.”

You can catch a snippet of the Carry The Fire Podcast in the Instagram post below, and listen to the full episode here.

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