All of Paper Kingdom appears to have leaked this morning? Well, a very early, demo version of it anyway. Downloading now, will report back if it’s legit.
I’m three songs in and so far it’s legit. Edit: I should add it’s definitely a demo. But a pretty far along demo.
I do feel bad for the band in the sense that something they didn’t want out there is out there. While this is far along, it is clearly not in the condition they would have released it in if they even wanted to. That has to be really grating for a band that has cultivated its catalogue pretty meticulously.
Yeah I feel like they’ve made it pretty clear they didn’t want this out there. hopefully there’s nothing on here that they were planning on retooling or reusing on a future release. Really I’m just afraid of anything that would cause them to change plans to actually release new content. I still delusionally believe new music is coming.
Crazy, I remember when this almost leaked a couple years ago. Agreed that these are pretty far along demos - I feel bad for the band and also hope this doesn't affect future release plans.
iirc, someone claimed to have the demos and was selling them for $15,000, and apparently only one person ended up buying them before any mention of them was scrubbed from the Internet. idk if these stemmed from that, but they do sound legit
Clearly this is a Steal This Album situation where they'll have no choice but to make the album, right?
Some good stuff here but I can see why it wasn't finished and why Frank says it's mostly unsalvageable. Be interesting to see if any of the stuff comes out in the future.
I saw a post on Insta this morning saying something like "if you see anything about Paper Kingdom online today, remember these demos were stolen from the late Doug McKean". I couldn't find any articles online but now makes sense why. So I guess I'll relay that, either way.
The Streisand Effect is in full motion. I'd love to hear the demos but only if they're officially released.
Probably burnt CDs that they had for references that were stolen/acquired after his death through an estate sale or fell in the hands of an unsavory family member.
The MCR reddit is deleting basically any mention of the leak. " For those unaware, The Paper Kingdom was the name of what would’ve been the follow-up album to Danger Days. MCR went into the studio in early 2012 to make it and it was during its creation process the band essentially broke down. This led to the band going on a multi-year hiatus with an album full of unfinished songs but possibly not what would’ve been the full album, as they never got that far to commit to solely what they already had. MCR’s members in the years during the hiatus would express dissatisfaction with what they had created for The Paper Kingdom. Members of MCR have expressed if an MCR5 were to happen, it likely would not be The Paper Kingdom. It is a largely abandoned project, similar to the first iteration of what would become their third album Danger Days. Today a full set of pre-existing scratch tapes/demos of The Paper Kingdom songs leaked by an anonymous person. These are not the finished songs, nor is it even technically the full album, and neither has MCR officially released these or endorsed them in any way."
Something like this was frankly inevitable between the growing hunger for new music, the endless non-teases by the band, and the mystique around what could have been. It's surprising it took this long.
Nice to have a recorded version of War Beneath the Rain, and really fascinating as a time capsule and almost like a glimpse st an alternate timeline. But I think they made the right move canning this. I think it would be by far their weakest record, and after the polarizing reception to Danger Days (which I personally loved and still do), I think an underwhelming “return to form” would’ve soured their legacy a bit. EDIT: I guess I should clarify that those are my thoughts IF this was close to the finished product. It’s entirely possible that if they had kept at it, the finished product would’ve improved.