When Panic! At the Disco called it quits earlier this year, it bared little resemblance to the band Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz signed to his Deycandance Label back in 2005 after getting demos from former lead guitarist Ryan Ross via Live Journal. In fact, there was no band. After years of lineup changes, Brendon Urie used the Panic! At the Disco name for his solo project starting in 2015. But this dramatic shift didn’t hinder their success. If anything, they seemed to be bigger than ever thanks to chart-topping albums like Death of a Bachelor and Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! But before the lineup changes and Urie’s solo career, Panic! At the Disco were five friends from Vegas who shook up the alt-rock scene with their stellar debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out.

Urie said he wanted the band to do “whatever we wanted” and that’s exactly what they did on their 2005 debut, but making it was a daunting task. After getting signed to Deycadance, the band entered the studio in June 2005 with only three and a half weeks to record on a budget of $11,000. Recording sessions were strenuous often lasting 14 hours a day five days a week. Adding to the tension were the band’s cramped living conditions; they shared a one-bedroom basement apartment that was so small they had to sleep in bunk beds. And because things weren’t stressful enough, Urie blew out his vocals after tracking the album.

During recording, the band went through “an identity crisis” trying to figure out the album’s sound. The electronic-based demos they wrote in Vegas didn’t match the rock-forward songs they wrote in the studio. Rather than ditching the rock songs, producer Matt Squire convinced them to include all tracks they recorded and use “the creative evolution as the theme of the album.” This was an ambitious move that would eventually pay off when the record was finally released three months later.