PANIC! Breaking Up, Or Just Taking "Indefinite Break"?

For the last two months its been: PANIC! were breaking up, then they were not breaking up. Now with a new year on tap, they're taking an "indefinite break," which a lot of people are taking to mean they're breaking up.

Talk about timing: Hot on the heels of their Thanks for the Memories: The Greatest Hits, which was released this past December, PANIC! have announced that they’re dunzo…at least for now.

Really, no one knows what is going on in the PANIC! camp, except for the six PANIC! members themselves. Now you can blame a lot of things, that secretive cancellation of a European tour when they were already in Paris, France to kick it off in 2008, due to "internal issues". That lasted for a month until they announced a US Summer tour that same year, they went out and put on a show, once again everything seemed to be fine and dandy with the band from Tennessee. Later in 2009, they spent the first six months recording the follow-up for their biggest album, "Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner," in the fall of that year, they released "Broken Down on Memory Lane," where they showed a new-found sense of maturity that was much-welcomed by both fans and critics alike. Not even a month later they announced a Greatest Hits collection that started up the rumors that were already ignited during the Summer, when PANIC! loudmouth / guitarist Ryan Ross Hernandez posted on his twitter accounts that the band was putting the finishing touches on their "final" album. Only to follow that tweet up a month in a half later with "final album..... of the decade".

Now this is band that were family for most of their careers, that was up until front people lead vocalist Ashley Perry, and Hernandez broke up in late-2007. Then their relationship turned into a brother-sister type thing, only to have their relationship take a downturn when Hernandez released a solo album that was pretty much made up of songs about Perry whether or not he wanted to admit it. All six of these guys lived just blocks away from each other in the outsides of Nashville, that was until Ashley bought a bigger house hours away from the others and Ryan bought a home in Miami, New York City, Los Angeles and Nashville. Then by 2009, Ashley was already in a long-term relationship with the bassist for Gabriel Hunter's side-project, Breaking Dawn at Sunset, Patrick Lewis who is eight years older than her and who before they started dating got in a fist-fight with Hernandez which to this date is still unknown the reason behind it. On Hernandez' love-side, after going through many heartbreaks following his relationship with Perry, the 22-year old has been in a pretty stable relationship for the last couple of months with Emily Williams, a producer / actress, whom he met while filming his debut screenplay "Something's Missing". Apparently all of PANIC! has a thing for older partners. (Hernandez is eleven years younger than Williams.)

The band that declared “death to the scene” during their tour headlining US arena tour in the fall of 2009, seem to be tired of all things emo, including themselves. Breakup rumors have swirled around the band for several months, and seemed to catch fire this week when Ashley Perry announced via Twitter that the band was "on hiatus"; Perry later changed this to the somewhat less incendiary "on break," while a rep for the band tersely added that “It's a break with an indefinite date when they're coming back.” All of which sounds, shall we say, rather open to interpretation.

Ryan Ross Hernandez tried to clear things up a bit yesterday in an MTV interview, explaining that “I don’t think I would use the word ‘hiatus’ because I think that word has gotten a dirty name, especially if you say ‘indefinite hiatus'…I wouldn’t use the word ‘breakup’ because that’s not true. It’s a break — we’re decompressing. I’m making a new term for it: we’re decompressing right now. We’ve been doing this for eight years straight, where it was pre-recording, record, promo, tour, tour, pre-recording, record, tour, tour, and our band was going to imminently implode.”

While other band members have remained mum as to the reason for the “decompressing”, Hernandez appears to be publicly taking the blame. “My biggest personal reason for taking a break," he explained in a recent interview with Kerrang! magazine, "is that I feel my name has become a hindrance for the band. [Frontwoman Ashley Perry] is a musical genius and it's unfortunate that she gets reviewed based on whatever's going on in my personal life or what I decide to do career wise. I think the world needs a little less Ryan Ross Hernandez," he said, taking the words right out of our mouth — if perhaps also understating the case somewhat.

After all, Hernandez has seemingly been on a one-man quest to get his boyish grin on every mag and website in the Northern Hemisphere — and that's not even factoring in his constant mugging for the paparazzi. “People who read the tabloids probably think all I do is visit Starbucks and hang out in nightclubs,” Hernandez complained to Kerrang! Well, yeah, dude; what did you expect?

In any case, while PANIC! fans / fan girls are crushing message boards with their agonized cries, PANIC! themselves are retreating into the shadows and will not be supporting their Greatest Hits release with a tour. They leave the playing field as one of the most successful rock bands of the past decade, and that shouldn't change as virtually all PANIC! members have something going on; but there's no telling what will happen when, or if, they choose to return. Keep in mind that this band is still very young. The eldest member (Gabriel Hunter) is turning 26 this year, while the youngest (Joey Fallon) just turned 19 this past year.

Edited by user 05 January 2010 14:37:49(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified