Joe Trohman Admits He Doesn’t Like Fall Out Boy’s ‘Mania’

Fall Out Boy lead guitarist Joe Trohman revealed in a recent interview with Rolling Stone that he was not a fan of the band’s latest album “Mania.” Trohman said he mostly preferred to stay outdoors during the recording process.
Joe Trohman and his friend Pete Wentz were discussing forming a melodic band inspired by the sound of bands like Green Day. Then Trohman recruited Patrick Stump after meeting him at a bookstore, and they ended up with the name Fall out Boy.
The band first gained recognition while touring in support of their debut album “Take This to Your Grave”. Later they achieved mainstream success with “From Under the Cork Tree”, which entered the US Billboard 200 at number 9. The group established itself on the international music scene with hit singles such as “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” and ” Dance, Dance.’
The pop-punk band’s triumphant appearance continued with the next record ‘infinity at the top‘, which became a significant hit by debuting at number 1 on the Billboard 200. After an indefinite hiatus, they announced their unexpected comeback in 2013.
Continuing to produce ever since, the band released their latest album ‘Mania‘ in 2018 as a follow-up to ‘American Beauty/American Psycho’. The album departs from the band’s pop-punk style and embraced more electro-pop music sound. Although it debuted at number 1 on the US Billboard and achieved commercial success, Joe Trohman was not so happy with the album.
In a recent interview, Trohman said he wasn’t thrilled with the record during the creative process. As he revealed, he was there whenever needed, but mostly tried to stay out of it. According to him, the album failed to live up to its potential, although he had many creative ideas. The guitarist noted that he was interested in playing music with all the different instruments while recording. In his opinion, they should have produced “cool” material instead of focusing on hit singles.
Joe Trohman had the following to say about “Mania”:
“I would say, ‘I’m going to get through this. That’s not what I want to do. When you have business together, give it to me. If you want me to brainstorm on this or anything, I’ll do it in my recording studio. And I did that a bit, but overall I pretty much stayed away, more or less. “Mania” contains cool ideas and interesting stuff. But it didn’t work out as well, and I can’t say I like it.
This is what leads me, I hope, to start making a record again with guitars, bass, drums and vocals. I love synthesizers, synthesizers that we play with. We can play music; let’s play music. Let’s not go looking for samples. Let’s not try to reach singles. At this point, we’ve had so many hit singles. Do we really still need to search for singles? I think we should just make a cool record.”
You can check out the album below.