A few weeks ago, My Chemical Romance broke up in a surprise announcement on their website. While they hadn’t put out a full-length since 2010’s Danger Days, they’d recently released a series of 10 singles in five installments, under the umbrella title Conventional Weapons, in late 2012 and early 2013. I can’t stress enough how great those songs are.
They’re just 10 amazing modern-punk tracks that show off MCR’s ambition and pure power in a straightforward way, unencumbered by the concepts of their last two full-lengths. It’s telling that they were recorded before Danger Days, and not just because one of tracks, “Make Room!!!!,” is a clear blueprint for “Na Na Na,” the single off their now-final record. “Make Room!!!!” is definitely my pick for the best rock song of 2013, so far. These songs could easily find radio-play and maybe even critical acclaim, if rock radio (and, arguably, rock in general, #sorrykids) wasn’t afflicted with terminal brain cancer.
Let’s get to the catharsis. I discovered MCR when most of the world did, shortly after Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge came out in 2004. I was 17 at the time and ate it up like the die-hard emo kid I was at the time. But, I turned on it quickly and unfairly, when I got more into indie music and felt like the only “emo” that had artistic merit was Bright Eyes. I unfairly categorized them as just another band that was part of a genre with little chance at genuine longevity.
This changed, dramatically, with The Black Parade. I don’t think even MCR’s diehard fans were prepared for that album. I was knocked the fuck out by it when I heard it on my first college Christmas break in 2006. Consider all of its highlights. There’s the opening one-two punch of “The End.” and “Dead,” the despair-fueled fury of “This is How I Disappear” and “The Sharpest Lives.” There’s the soaring pathos of the power ballads “Welcome to the Black Parade,” “I Don’t Love You” and “Cancer.” For me, most of all, the top three tracks are “Sleep,” “Teenagers” and “Disenchanted.”
Those three songs were and still are an emotional murder-hole for me. The way Gerard Way devolves from the chorus of “Just sleep” to a high-pitched scream of pure, the palpable pain at the end of “Sleep,” and the brief glam-rock highs of “Teenagers” (offset by its cheerful nihilism – “another cog in the murder machine”) make the album. The devastation of “Disenchanted” is the pièce de résistance. The song’s chorus – “You’re just a sad song, with nothing to say, about a lifelong wait for a hospital stay, and if you think that I’m wrong, this never meant nothing to you” – embodied my freshman year feelings about life so completely. It was almost unlistenable. I felt bereft of hope and purpose then. That album and the music of Nine Inch Nails quite literally kept me alive because I could identify with art fueled by the same confusion and sadness that I could not shake for the life of me.
The deep trauma of MCR frontman Gerard Way’s crippling insecurity and alcohol/pill addiction is all over Parade, largely because he’d been sober for almost two years before the album’s recording. As a result, it resonates more fully to the listener (and is more affecting) than the emotional core of a song like “I’m Not Okay (I Promise),” which is a bit too tethered to its embodiment of teenage laments.
The Black Parade certainly holds up more strongly seven years later than some of MCR’s other work. Yet, you can’t say that Three Cheers doesn’t retain its own form of power, even if it feels more like a collection of quality singles than an album. Its first six songs – “Helena” through “The Ghost of You” – pack a greater punch than any record by MCR’s peers at the time (with the possible exception of Brand New’s Déjà Entendu). The second half is more uneven, but none of it is bad.
Even Danger Days, certainly the weirdest entry in MCR’s catalog, is not without significant appeal. It may be overly tethered to its concept – the last band ever, essentially, playing on a rebel radio station in a vague dystopian/totalitarian future. However, the bizarre synth-pop flourishes on it mesh curiously well with the band’s aesthetic. Songs like “SING,” “The Only Hope for Me is You,” “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W” and “The Kids from Yesterday” absolutely recall that feeling of cathartic release that’s so prominent in their best music.
As often happens when bands break up, I miss MCR’s presence in the music landscape more now that they’ve removed themselves from it than I did when they were around, but not releasing new music. This is sort of hypocritical, but fuck it. The band is bound to retain relevance that its genre kin will not, Fall Out Boy’s impending comeback notwithstanding. With any luck, MCR may in time enjoy a renaissance much like Nine Inch Nails is about to enter. Even if they don’t, those like me, and hopefully many others, will return to their discography and feel the immense cathartic rush of one of the best bands from an oft-maligned branch of music.
Liam Green can be reached at lgreen@thoughtpollution.com.