As of right now, six-person strong The Damned Things’ (consisting of Trohman and Hurley from FOB; Scott Ian and Rob Caggiano from Anthrax; and Keith Buckley and David Karon from Every Time I Die) website URL redirects you to a pretty sparse MySpace page, though it’s sure to fill up quickly—according to Rock Sounds, the band has already written fifteen songs and hopes to enter the studio this December.

We’re calling it now—supergroups are definitely the musical trend of 09. The Damned Things joins the super-ranks of Them Crooked Vultures (including members of Foo Fighters, Led Zepplin, and Queens of the Stone Age), Apparatjik (Coldplay, a-ha and Mew), and Tinted Windows (Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne, Cheap Trick and Hanson), just to name a few.

We’re not entirely sure what happened to Hurley’s side project Burning Empires, but we’re fully supportive of all these musicians stepping outside the groups they normal play with so they can expand their musical horizons, and in Andy and Joe’s case, scratch that metal itch we know they’ve had for awhile. Just don’t be gone too long, kay?

So Fall Out Boy is taking a break. Or maybe they aren’t, and it’s really just a sugar-coated break-up? They’re denying it’s anything of the sort, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but in the meantime we have a few suggestions for how Pete, Patrick & Co. should invest their free time:

Pete Wentz
Pete has enough going on in his life already besides being in a band – he has his baby Bronx, his wife, and a move to New York now that Ashlee’s set to star on Broadway in Chicago. Though Ash is only performing for a limited engagement, Pete could use a break from being pals with the paparazzi in LA and re-locate to Manhattan with his fam. Bonus: he can more closely manage  Angels & Kings—isn’t a greatest-hits collection an occasion to add more FOB-themed drinks to the menu?

His Clandestine Industries fashion line is doing well (and not just on little fangirls who wear their bat hoodies every day until they’re old enough to get the logo tattooed on their ankle). Pete could always focus on another art gallery exhibit like last year’s “Without You, I’m Not Me” (co-created with Gym Class Heroes’ Travis McCoy), which seemed like the start of something worthwhile.

His short-lived project to bring music videos back to MTV (with FNMTV) didn’t last long in a schedule that seems to be desirous of a 25th hour to re-run The Hills, but we’d like to see him return to curating music somewhere. Hello, Spike TV?

Joe Trohman
Joe is going back to his metal roots and working on a side project, Wentz revealed in an interview with Music Radar, and Trohman even discussed returning to metal back when the band was promoting Folie à Deux. Probably a good move for Joe, who admitted that Fall Out Boy’s music isn’t even really his scene and he just does it “for fun”:

“I write a lot of metal on the side, stuff I’ve been demo-ing out. I’m trying to work on some stuff with other people in that realm. A lot of what we’ve come up with is kind of like a dichotomy between some Sabbath and some Kyas. But, like heavy, really heavy. I think that’s just like what I grew up playing and more comfortable for me. Fall Out Boy, I guess, it’s just something I do for fun.”

We’d love to see Joe shine in another band for awhile—is it so much of a stretch to think he’s a David Grohl-in-waiting? That’s pretty much how we see Joe, a star musician mostly pushed off to the side.

Andy Hurley
Andy is seemingly pulling a Wentz recently, creating his own clothing line F*CKCITY (asterisk ours) as well as starting a record label to go along with it. We know Andy’s got an ear for music underneath that coat of tattoos. It’d be interesting to see what other bands he lifts out of the Chicago hardcore scene.

He’s also currently touring with his hardcore band Burning Empires, who performed their first show just this month. Sounds about right for Andy. Keep it up, brotha.

Patrick Stump
A solo Stump album is at the very top of my list of Patrick’s to-do list. You can tell he’s itching to stretch out from being in an easily and often mocked “S/scene” band into being a universally respected singer/songwriter. Patrick has already worked with practically everyone in music (Jay-Z, Lupe Fiasco, Lil Wayne, Babyface, Akon, John Mayer, Debbie Harry just off the top of our head), and he’d have huge acts lining up to provide guest vocals in case he was too shy to shoulder an album completely on his own. We’ve already seen him play a solo gig for a charity concert at his alma mater, so he’s more than capable of going it alone – though, admittedly, it is a bit weird seeing him without Pete and Joe twirling around on either side of him.

If a solo album just isn’t forthcoming, he could always focus on acting, a discipline where he surely has room to grow.

Directing, however… not so much. We checked out Patrick’s directorial debut, the short Moustachette, which features Yellowcard frontman Ryan Key and a super-brief appearance by Wentz, and let’s just say Patrick should stick to what he does best during his time-off from FOB—not directing.