Fall Out Boy riding wave of success as band focuses on creating music

Drummer Andy Hurley had been in many hardcore bands with bassist Pete Wentz before they formed Fall Out Boy. Basically, they both just wanted a change of scenery.

"We just got burned out with the heaviness and the negative energies of the hardcore scene," Hurley said by phone from Atlanta. "We wanted to do something different."

So they teamed up with lead guitarist Joe Trohman and rhythm guitarist/vocalist Patrick Stump and named the new band Fall Out Boy, after a sidekick character on "The Simpsons."

"The music we play now is so different than what we did in the past," said Hurley, who cited Metallica and Slayer as his major musical influences. "The focus has always been on the music. And it still is."

In 2002, the band released its first CD, "Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend," on Uprising Records. Three years later, the label reissued the CD to coincide with the band's major-label debut on Island Records, "From Under the Cork Tree."

In between, Fall Out Boy recorded and released "Take This to Your Grave" for the Fueled By Ramen label.

"Take This to Your Grave" sold more than 500,000 copies, pushing the disc to Gold Record status. "From Under the Cork Tree" sold more than 3 million copies. And the band's most recent album, "Infinity on High," released earlier this year, has already sold 1 million copies and became the No. 1 album on Billboard's 200. Today it sits strongly at No. 31.

"It always surprises us at the success of our albums," said Hurley. "We don't write the songs thinking they're going to be successful. And when they get noticed, it's always a good thing for us."

Recording "Infinity on High" was not much different than the studio sessions for "From Under the Cork Tree," said Hurley. "We had the whole album ready to record, but like we did on 'Cork Tree,' we scrapped half the songs and wrote new ones in the studio.

"So it's safe to say that half the songs are newer than the other half. In fact, the song 'Golden' wasn't among the original songs we had ready for recording."

But preparing to record "Infinity on High" was far from a nerve-wracking process, said Hurley. "We don't worry about following up success. 'Cork Tree' did well way beyond our expectations, but we didn't worry whether or not 'Infinity' would do better. We just did what we felt was right.

"'Infinity' is our second major-label full-length album and, in reality, we have more than just two CDs. So we're pretty comfortable with the process. We just look at a new CD as a welcome accomplishment."