Panic! At the Disco's Second Album is Really Like Their Third

Confused? Well, Ryan Ross recently revealed that the band was about three-quarters done with their second album when they decided to scrap it and start over from the beginning. Cue fans begging for the songs that were killed by the band immediately.

Ryan said:

We've had quite an interesting last nine months. We were in the mountains for a while, writing songs, and we moved to L.A. for a bit, and then we decided to start over in July. So now we're kind of trying to finish writing this second second record. Actually, it's almost like our third record, since we were like three-quarters finished with the other one before we scrapped it.

Maybe the band was incompatible with the mountains? They don't really seem like mountain men, do they?

Possibly, but Ryan elaborated, saying they didn't really have the proper setup when they were in their little cabin, and everyone was just writing separate parts that didn't fit together, and when they combined the ambitions of a storyline that ran through the whole album, nothing worked.

We went through a stage of writing that just happened because we were on tour for so long, and we were sick of those old songs so much that we decided to write songs that were really complicated and challenging for us. Then we realized that it's not going to be any fun to play these live either, so we decided to ditch the whole project. There was a story line throughout the whole record, a short story, and we decided to put that on the shelf and just start playing as a band, and it's been a lot better.

He went on to add that the songs are happier and more uplifting, largely because the band just isn't really sad anymore. Which makes sense, given that they're not in the same place they were over three years ago, when they started working on their first album. Sounds like typical growing pains, really.

As for what's to come? The band is hoping to have a single by the end of the year ["probably around Christmas"] and release their second/third/whatever you want to call it album in February of 2008. But none of that is set in stone, so don't hold your breath. After all, they may decided to scrap this one and go on to album #4, stockpiling more unreleased material than Tupac and Jeff Buckley combined.