Gerard Way's new solo album helped him overcome his battle with depression.

The musician has revealed his morale was at an all time low after his former band released their hit LP 'The Black Parade' and in hindsight he should have quit the group that made him a star.

After the rockers disbanded in March 2013, Gerard returned to music as a form of ''therapy'' and from those initial songwriting sessions his debut solo effort 'Hesitant Alien' was born.

In an interview with The Sun newspaper, he revealed: ''This record didn't start as a solo album, it started as therapy. I didn't want My Chemical Romance to end just because I wanted to make a solo album. That's the story for many artists but not for me. The band was done after that album ('The Black Parade'). I wasn't following my art or listening to myself or else I would have known to stop them ... I was in a band I didn't want to be in anymore, doing something I didn't want to do anymore and I fell into a huge depression.''

As he was coming to terms with his depression it was Gerard's producer, Doug McKean, who advised him to start making music for the enjoyment of it, not any other motivation.

He explained: ''Doug said to me, 'Just make music because you want to, not because you feel you have to.' So I started making demos without thinking of an audience or what a successful album needed to be. It was me messing around with a lot of fuzz pedals and making music because I needed to because I was so depressed.''

The 37-year-old American rocker says the album - out next week - has a ''British punk and shoegazey'' sound but the main influence was David Bowie.

He said: ''People like Damon Albarn, Morrissey, PJ Harvey, Peter Gabriel and Bowie from the Berlin era. All the oddness that I tried to inject into this album came from Bowie's Berlin era.''