When Fall Out Boy ended a four-year hiatus this spring with the release of fifth album Save Rock and Roll, audiences and critics were clearly happy to hear their unique blend of verbose, baroque pop-punk on the airwaves again. (Lead single “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)” hit No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 – rarified air for a rock band in the 2010s.)
If you’d told fans they’d follow up Save Rock and Roll with a taut, grimy EP of punk tunes, it might’ve been hard to believe. But PAX AM Days, announced this weekend as the band’s newest release, is exactly that: eight frenetic tracks over 12 minutes (only one track breaks the two-minute mark), cut over two days this summer with Ryan Adams at his Los Angeles studio from which the band named the album.
The newly-released “Love, Sex, Death” from the new EP, which you can hear courtesy of Rolling Stone, lives up to bassist Pete Wentz’s description of PAX AM Days as “the stuff that makes you want to kick the shit out of your bedroom at your parents’ house.” FOB’s hooks are handily traded in for breakneck riffs, with vocalist Patrick Stump tempering his soaring tenor with more bite than the band has possibly ever had.
PAX AM Days will be released digitally on October 15 and will also be included as part of a double-disc reissue of Save Rock and Roll on the same day. Additionally, a vinyl release is planned for Record Store Day’s Black Friday event.