THIS IS HOW I DISAPPEAR

I started this project almost three months ago, thinking it’d be a longer series of shorter blurbs about bands that I got made fun of for liking by my hardcore friends when I was in middle and high school. I thought I would maybe get a few clicks on my previously-dead blog and perhaps find some interesting things to say about bands that people to this day don’t take quite as seriously as they should.

Instead, I’ve found myself exploring what a bunch of bands have meant to me over the years, examining my own experiences with nostalgia, reckoning with mistakes that my idols have made, learning how mainstream music has changed since the early-mid 2000s, and relearning what made me fall in love with these bands in the first place. I’ve gotten tons of positive feedback, a surprising amount of traffic, and I even managed to parlay it into my first professionally published article. I feel so eternally grateful. I also learned that I can’t phone these articles in, and that I should only write about bands here that mean a lot to me.

So, for my final article in this series, I want to talk about the band of all bands that you were not allowed to like, and a band that means more to me than any band I’ve covered so far aside from Fall Out Boy: My Chemical Romance.

I actually didn’t get into My Chemical Romance until long after I had gotten into DIY hardcore. I was definitely aware of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge when it came out because “Helena (So Long & Goodnight)” and “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” were quite literally inescapable, but everything changed for me one sleepy day in 2006 or 2007. My little brother, Ethan, came home from school and said that he had heard a song he really liked and wanted me to put it on the iPod Shuffle that our family shared. This wasn’t uncommon practice, because my dad had taught me how to pirate music when I was very young, so my brother would often ask me to download things for him. This time, the song he wanted was “Teenagers,” by My Chemical Romance. I thought I’d do him a solid and download the band’s discography for him. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the following week, I was bored and decided to listen to the band’s first album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, on a whim. Over a decade later, and my love affair with My Chemical Romance, vampire-like, refuses to die.

SKYLINES & TURNSTILES

My Chemical Romance’s origins in 9/11 have been talked about to death, but in case you somehow have not heard the story: Gerard Way was a struggling New Jersey cartoonist in 2001 who took a ferry to New York to pitch a show to Adult Swim. He witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers (later writing the first My Chem song, “Skylines & Turnstiles,” about the experience) and decided to walk away from cartoons and comics (for a time, anyway) to “do something with his life,” soon forming a band with friend and drummer Matt “Otter” Pelissier. They roped in the impressively afro’d Ray Toro as guitarist when it was discovered that Gerard could not sing and play guitar at the same time. Gerard’s younger brother, Mikey, learned bass so he could be in the band once he heard some early demos that they cut in Otter’s attic; Mikey is also responsible for naming the band, after seeing Irvine Welsh’s book Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance in the Barnes & Noble where he was working. The “My” was added later to add a personal dimension to the name– in a typically dark and tongue-in-cheek way, it could also refer to the drinking and drug habits of Gerard, which would inform much of the subject matter on the first two My Chem records.

One thing that a lot of people don’t talk about is how eclectic My Chem’s influences are, which is a large part of what made them such good songwriters. They were obviously heavily inspired by what was going on in their backyard in Jersey, as the fingerprints of Saves the Day’s fizzy, feisty pop-punk and the romantically macabre post-hardcore of Thursday are all over their early material. In fact, it was the friendship and faith of Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly that gave My Chem the early push that they needed; he produced their debut record, after all, and his co-sign gave the nascent band some much-needed credibility in the competitive and insular New Jersey punk scene.

However, the bedrock of My Chem’s sound is a lot more varied than they often get credit for: one of their biggest influences was Philadelphian vampire-noisemakers Ink & Dagger, who made angular, synth-infused hardcore that’s hard to categorize; outside of traditional goth influences like the Cure, Bauhaus, and Siouxsie & the Banshees, they were huge fans of the Smiths and Morrissey, going so far as to cover Morrissey’s “Jack the Ripper” at early shows; there is the token influence of classic hardcore bands like the baritone horror-punk of the Misfits, the tortured, jazz-inflected chaos of Black Flag, and the strident, straightforward fury of Minor Threat; Gerard in particular was inspired by the layered, evolving melodies of 90s Britpop like Pulp and Blur; the band members taught themselves to scream by listening to the melodic death metal of At the Gates; Ray Toro took a lot from the NWOBHM, especially Iron Maiden; the majestic, classical-influenced rock of Queen and the timeless harmonies of the Beatles were seminal parts of their sound; and of course, the proto-punk and glam rock of David Bowie, T. Rex, and the Stooges permeates through much of their material and persona, and is what eventually won them the respect of mainstream music critics.

Their music had lots of non-sonic influences as well, like the pulpy comic books and cheesy horror B-movies that the band pulled a lot of its aesthetic and lyrical cues from. Altogether, My Chem truly didn’t sound like any other band in their scene, and that is what made people sit up and take notice of them. One of those people was a sickly, tiny boy named Frank Iero who, at the time, was singing and playing guitar in the post-hardcore/pop-punk/Holden Caulfield hybrid Pencey Prep, as well as the more experimental side-project I Am A Graveyard; he was also a touring guitarist for one of the greatest hardcore bands of all time, American Nightmare (who were going by the name Give Up the Ghost at the time for legal reasons). Frank had a diverse set of influences all his own, from the throat-shredding, artsy hardcore of Converge to the punchy and melodic emocore of Lifetime, and adding him to the band during the recording process of their debut was the final piece of the puzzle. He only played on two songs (opener “Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us” and “Early Sunsets Over Monroeville”), but he added so much immediate weight to the band and would soon be an inextricable element of their sound and live shows.

I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love isn’t the most fully-formed My Chem album, but it is my favorite, not only because it’s the first one that I heard, but also because I love the way the band sounds when all their influences are so close to coming together: the song structures are just a little more ragged; the performances a little bit more energetic and desperate to prove themselves; the hooks just a smidge more subtle. Of course, subtlety doesn’t preclude melodrama– after the unnerving classical guitar in the intro track, “Romance,” we’re treated to the melodeath-derived riff that opens “Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us” and we get Gerard’s over-the-top, near-cheesy scream of “The amount of pills I’m taking/counteracts the booze I’m drinking.” What a way to announce themselves to the world.

Gerard’s vocals are really the crux of My Chem’s sound. They’re extremely emotionally expressive, and they’re also malleable, making for an ability to work well with lots of varied material. However, his commitment to and passion for the material is a bit of a double-edged sword. For some people, like me, his unhinged, unguarded, and completely vulnerable performance melds perfectly with his charisma and I find his vocals to be one of the most charming aspects of their sound. For others, his near-histrionics are just too much, and they’re everything they hate about that mainstream era of emo. Fair enough, but those people are missing out, especially on the sprawling epic “Vampires Will Never Hurt You,” which rises and falls in tension until it bubbles over in an extended, nearly two-minute climax that causes the song to practically cave in on itself.

Elsewhere, songs like “Drowning Lessons” show what a goth Saves the Day might have sounded like, with some of the most nuanced and infectious guitar work of Ray Toro’s career– the harmonics that hover over the breakdown at the end are so interesting, and I could listen to those 40 seconds on a loop. Meanwhile, “Our Lady of Sorrows” is a breakneck fan-favorite (aside from their traditional performance of “Vampires Will Never Hurt You,” it’s the only song from this album that they played at their final show), filled with memorable moments like the two-step chorus, the ultra-melodic bridge, the “take my fucking hand” refrain, and the hair-raising scream that closes the track. “Our Lady of Sorrows” also provided me with one of my many message-board aliases back in the day (PatronSaintofSwitchbladeFights, in case you’re wondering).

Before we go any further, I do want to take a moment to talk about “Headfirst for Halos,” which is my favorite My Chemical Romance song. It’s the first song of theirs to betray their Queen influence in the towering, achingly melodic intro, and the concept of the song, musically, was “thrash Beatles,” which they pulled off exceptionally well. However, even aside from the intoxicating music, the lyrics on this song are what have stuck with me for all these years and kept me coming back to it. I didn’t understand what “the red ones make me fly and the blue ones help me fall” really meant at the time (I was straight-edge in 2007 and wouldn’t have real contact with addiction until a few years later), but “I think I’ll blow my brains against the ceiling” was a line that immediately grabbed me. I knew what that felt like for sure. For years, whenever I was in one of my lowest places, I could put this song and hear someone else articulate how it feels to be that miserable. “Think happy thoughts,” indeed.

“Skylines & Turnstiles” is an interesting track, mainly because of how obvious it is that it’s their first song– the Thursday influence is palpable, the juxtaposition between the singing and screaming is just a bit more amateurish than the rest of the album, and they didn’t quite know how to end the damn thing– but also because it’s one of the most mournful, elegaic, and genuine sets of lyrics to be penned in the aftermath of 9/11. Lots of punk bands were willing to sing about the event’s political implications, but few were plaintive enough to simply ask someone to “tell me where we go from here.” Plus, it’s here that the precision and weight of Otter’s drumming becomes most strongly apparent– his fills are extremely agile and nimble. Meanwhile, for being the newest musician of the bunch, Mikey nails his bass lines. They’re simple yet catchy (and he was the only member to nail them all in one take!).

The home stretch of Bullets is where things begin to get a little more fragmented and experimental. For some people, this is where the album becomes unlistenable, but I adore it– “Early Sunsets Over Monroeville” is a song about the emotional conflict of having to shoot a loved one during a zombie apocalypse, but Gerard pitches his performance perfectly, selling the pain of the situation with authenticity despite suffering from a muffled vocal mix (he had just had surgery for a horrible toothache that made him punch his own head from the pain, which is why he sounds so garbled). Musically, this is the closest My Chem ever got to Midwest emo, full of twinkly guitars, but it builds to such an overwhelming climax, reserved yet intense, that it transcends emo.

“This Is the Best Day Ever” is, correlatively, the closest they ever got to screamo, a fast-paced and short banger of a song that never lets up and also includes a nice gang vocal (which Geoff Rickly cameos in!). It’s a nice breather after the suffocating misery of “Monroeville,” and the more conventional “Cubicles” is a suitable follow-up. It’s the one song of theirs that blatantly addresses the misery of late capitalism and its subsequent alienation, but it’s also extremely catchy. It’s not my personal favorite on the record, but enough people have brought it up to me that I find myself viewing it in a much warmer light than I did previously. It’s lyrically one of the darkest moments on the record, but the dissonance in the sprightly instrumentation makes it addictive.

And of course, we have to talk about the six-minute closer, “Demolition Lovers.” Conceptually, it’s the one track from the album that undeniably ties into their next record (the couple in the song who dies in a gunfight after an armed robbery are the protagonists of Three Cheers), but musically, it’s a piece-de-resistance, betraying the band’s more epic ambitions and sliding through multiple music movements with ease and confidence. It’s also home to one of Ray’s most reserved-yet-epic solos, the centerpiece of the song being a heart-rending instrumental performance that boils over into an emotionally exhausting vocal performance in the climax.

I understand the argument that Bullets isn’t as coherent and complex as their later efforts, but this album means the world to me and every time I sit down to listen to it in full I feel completely satisfied. It doesn’t have the concise pop songwriting skills of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge nor the high-minded conceptuality or classic-rock pretensions of The Black Parade, but it makes up for that with a scrappy, endearing aesthetic and an unflinching penchant for picking at the most upsetting scabs on the body of depression, mixing its unpleasant findings with just enough B-movie goofiness to make for an exhilarating ride into the psyche of five damaged New Jersey hardcore kids with coke and pop habits. Plus, it’s got some of their most nuanced, subtle, yet completely over-the-top songwriting. What happens when you combine obviously talented kids who just don’t quite know how to write songs yet with the resources to record a full-length album (presided over by one of their closest friends and musical idols)? You get an over-eager, endlessly fun, addictive, and fascinating listening experience. If you’ve somehow missed out on Bullets, give it a chance– even if you’re a holier-than-thou “Orchid is the only real emo band” type, it might just sucker you in and win you over. I’ve witnessed it myself many a time (hi, Eleanor!). Bullets might not be their masterpiece, but it’s my favorite.

GIVE ‘EM HELL, KID

Of course, despite my love of their debut, I have to acknowledge that thematically, their later records give me a lot more to chew on. Gerard’s worsening addictions to alcohol, pills, and cocaine notwithstanding, the Way family experienced a huge blow with the loss of Gerard and Mikey’s grandmother, Elena, who was an avid supporter of the band and went to many of their early shows. Her death inspired the potent “Helena (So Long & Goodnight),” of course, but it also symbolizes the disconnect that Gerard was experiencing with reality. I can’t speak definitively, but I speculate that it was easier for him to turn his grandmother’s death into a comic-booky storyline that fit into the narrative that he was crafting for Three Cheers, because at the time, he was a mess of a person, deepening his toxic relationships with substances along with his one-time-best-friend Bert McCracken of the Used. This was an extremely dark time for the band, despite their excellent performances on PureVolume and the riotous responses they were receiving on tour volleying them into a major label contract with Reprise Records, and it’s that morbid and miserable place that provided them with the emotions necessary to craft a gothic pop-punk masterpiece.

Everything on Three Cheers is raw. Arguably, the punchy and dry production on Bullets was lower-fi, but the production on Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is extremely unpolished, often pushing into the red and distorting as it gets louder (see the chorus on “The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You”). Meanwhile, the instrumental performances became much rowdier and more hectic (not at the expense of musicianship: the guitar dynamic between Ray and Frank became increasingly complex and intricate, while Mikey’s bass became much more integral to the band’s sound, providing hooks-a-plenty in moments like the intro to “Give ‘Em Hell, Kid”) and Gerard pushed his vocals to the point of collapse, often sounding like he was going to throw up from the intensity. Three Cheers may have been popular, but it wasn’t that accessible, and it also isn’t a far cry from the introspective, melodic hardcore and desperate, ragged vocal approach of emo’s founders, Rites of Spring. There’s octave chords and screams a-plenty on this album, they’re just more refined and well-structured than a lot of the other bands that came before them.

That, in addition to the band’s stellar image and aesthetic (playing every show in undertaker’s suits that got more gross, sweaty, and covered in fake blood as time went on) immediately endeared them to millions who wanted something just a little darker and edgier than the likes of Jimmy Eat World, and just a little more polished and propulsive than the likes of the Used. The breakthrough success of fellow goth kids AFI with 2003’s Sing the Sorrow probably paved the way, too, but My Chem were decidedly more untethered and energetic– they had true charisma and rock-star quality to them, more than any of their peers, and that made them magnetic. It helped that the core members of the band all had something to offer from an image perspective– Gerard’s upturned, pixie-like nose and adorable, sharp features made his violent vocal eruptions even more shocking, Ray Toro’s afro was extremely hard to look away from, Mikey’s small, waif-like, bespectacled appearance made him a twink ingenue, and Frank’s tiny stature and heavily tattooed frame made him the pretty-yet-approachable bad boy. Any high schooler would be head over heels for these guys.

Of course, their over-emoting and their use of makeup made them the most immediate punching bag for the type of people who never understood emo’s mainstream breakthrough. It’s really with Three Cheers pushing them into the national conversation that diehard rock and metal fans grew to greatly dislike My Chem; Gerard’s heart-on-sleeve theatrics just made zero sense to them, after a decade of macho posturing by nu-metal and alt-rock bands, and even their metallic streak (seriously, the opening riff of “Thanks for the Venom” has Iron Maiden written all over it) wasn’t enough for people who prized technicality and proficiency above all else. Meanwhile, their older fans– many of whom Andy Greenwald memorably described as “hardcore hulks who hid their copy of Bullets with their secret stash of Morrissey imports” in a 2005 cover story for Spin— turned on the band, their major-label affiliation and newfound radio play (the stellar, Jimmy Eat World-meets-Queen pop classic “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” lit up the airwaves almost instantly, while its high school-set, tongue-in-cheek, Wes Anderson-esque video made the rounds constantly on MTV2 and Fuse) meant that they were disgusting sellouts no longer worth their time. The ire set upon their new fans– often young girls who shopped at Hot Topic and were playing with their self-loathing and low self-esteem through goth fashion and self-harm– was considerable, as was the homophobia heaped upon the band due to their penchant for face-paint and gaudy red eye shadow.

Luckily, the band welcomed its detractors– as the chorus of “Thanks for the Venom” evokes their hatred in addition to Gerard’s many addictions– because they fed off the negativity, and so did their fans. In embracing the darkest pits of despair (or at least, the darkest that a band could go and still remain mainstream), My Chem provided hopeless, mentally ill teenagers everywhere with rallying cries and, more than anything, a spokesperson who understood them. Gerard was known for telling fans during shows that if they were suffering from depression or suicidal impulses to get help, and in the process became much more than the wallowing stereotype of emo kids who were in love with their pain. Many years later, Gerard would come out as non-binary (he/they pronouns), and his early embrace of homoerotic imagery in his songs (pretty much the entirety of “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us In Prison,” for example) provided lots of LGBT and questioning youth the validation that they so desperately needed.

Of course, many of the issues that I brought up with Fall Out Boy’s fandom persisted in just as much, if not higher, frequency in My Chem’s– glorification of mental illness and self-harm, exploitation of gayness for the salacious pleasure of women who see gay men as spectacle, general grossness– but My Chem stood strong with their songs and with their fans, becoming a makeup-smudged oasis amid the pressures of everyday adolescent life.

It helped that Three Cheers was the tightest, most concise set of songs the band has ever put together, with some of their most inventive ideas on full display. The bizarre guitar effect in the intro of “Helena” coupled with the watery, buried vocals in the bridge was just the tip of the iceberg in a song that could have been a weepy power ballad sped up past breaking point. The choruses on this record, admittedly much moreso than Bullets, are absolutely indelible, while the songs as a whole are stacked with hooks, grabbing the listener by the neck and reeling them in whenever they start to feel bored. Even the weakest track, “The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You,” is saved by a massive bridge that uses AutoTune to satirical, slightly unhinged effect, and songs like the vaudeville-to-screamy-barn-burner “You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison” and the massive, chaotic “Hang ‘Em High” stand as the most breathless and exciting tunes the band has ever committed to tape. Other moments, like the way that Gerard’s wailing contrasts with the hypnotic guitar solo on the Glassjaw-esque “The Ghost of You” or the heart-pounding key change in the final chorus of the serene, bubbly showstopper “Cemetery Drive,” show the band’s grasp of dynamics at their height.

The way the album is paced makes almost every track feel like a standout, from the “whoa-oh” bridge of “To the End” to the weepy, impassioned climax of high-water-mark “It’s Not A Fashion Statement, It’s A Death Wish.” There’s barely any moments that don’t bleed with energy and passion, and guest appearances like Bert McCracken’s screaming in “You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison” and Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks’ buried yawps at the end of “Hang ‘Em High” pick up the slack when the band starts to falter (which they never really do). And of course, it closes with yet another mind-melting display of flawless song structure with “I Never Told You What I Do for a Living,” a song that turns its final two minutes into an endless bridge, chock full of tight performances, thrilling melodic turns, and the most heartfelt, singing-to-the-point-of-choking vocal performance from Gerard on the album.

Out of My Chem’s golden period, Three Cheers is the album with the least emotional attachment for me, but it’s still an incredible work of songwriting, and on a sheer musical level, I might argue that it’s My Chemical Romance’s best album. Its half-baked concept (a man must take 1,000 souls from evil men in order to bring back his girlfriend from the dead, or something) doesn’t detract from the adrenaline rush of its best musical moments– the rousing chorus of “Hang ‘Em High,” the piano-induced lyrical fakeout at the end of “I’m Not Okay,” the fist-pumping guitar solo in “Thank You for the Venom”– because structurally and performatively, the band is firing on all cylinders. The weakest moment on the whole album is the cheesy way that Gerard adopts a vague Latino affect in his voice when he says “Hotel Bella Muerte” in “The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You,” and I think that’s a pretty impressive achievement. If there’s one track that’s superfluous, it might be the Radiohead-influenced “Interlude,” but it works so well as a dividing line between the “acts” of the album that it’s hard to argue against its placement. Three Cheers is a masterpiece of the emo-pop era, and no amount of hand-wringing from the old guard nor the snide dismissal of the cooler-than-thou set can ever take that away from them.

Nowhere is this clearer than on the live album, Life On the Murder Scene. Gerard’s complete and total ownership of the crowd (and his excellent vocals– he does a pretty good approximation of Bert’s unbelievable performance on “You Know What They Do…”) blends perfectly with every other member’s strengths– Mikey’s staid consistency, Otter’s perfect control of tone and atmosphere, and Ray’s loyal backing vocals and flawless (matching the album nearly note-for-note) guitar chops. For Frank’s part, he gives the whole affair a punky, weighty, hardcore energy– listen to the way the guitar chugs during the bridge of “Cemetery Drive,” or the way that gang vocals give way to audience participation in “I Never Told You What I Do for a Living” (not to mention the handclaps in “Headfirst for Halos”) and you can practically smell Geoff Rickly’s basement. More than any other band, My Chem was the one that brought the spirit of underground emo and hardcore to the mainstream, for better or for worse.

Life On the Murder Scene also includes two of the best unreleased tracks in My Chemical Romance’s ouvre, “Bury Me In Black” and “Desert Song.” You can hear the roots of “Thank You for the Venom”‘s main riff in the intro of “Bury Me In Black,” but the whole song bleeds a sort of desperate, uncontrollable atmosphere, from the Gerard’s short-of-breath screams throughout to the Slayer-rip-off breakdown (just a double-bass part away from sounding exactly like an outtake from Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire). “Desert Song” is an acoustic song (albeit with some Oasis-esque electric overtones in the right channel) which features one of the most depressive and gutsy performances from Gerard– in any other band’s hands, it would be unspeakably cheesy, but here it’s absolutely heartbreaking. Alcohol-soaked miscreants they may have been, but My Chem justifiably ruled the world from 2004-2008, and Life On the Murder Scene is a pretty good document for making that point.

Still, what’s a band to do after their breakthrough? Successful major-label debuts are notoriously hard to come by, and harder still to follow up. My Chem had a few choices: they could flame out in a drug-and-alcohol-fueled blaze (which Gerard seemed to be heading towards); they could double down on the sound they’d found with Three Cheers and keep releasing bland rewrites of the same song; or they could clamp down, get their shit together, embrace some of their more traditional rock influences, and create something that was both exquisitely new and hearkened back to the old days of rock. They picked the latter.

THE BLACK PARADE IS DEAD

After barely being talked out of suicide in 2005 (immediately following an eightball and heavy drinking), Gerard got clean and sober and has mostly remained so for the entirety of his career since. The rest of the band, some of whom had almost been driven to quit (Frank Iero has said as much about that time period), rallied together and tried to create an album that could live up to monolithic expectations created by the success of Three Cheers.

My Chem are relentless perfectionists; listening to Living with Ghosts (the collection of Black Parade demos released on its 10th anniversary), it’s clear that the process of writing The Black Parade was extremely long and arduous, and you can hear bits and pieces of ideas that would be used elsewhere all over the place. “The Five of Us Are Dying” is a prehistoric version of “Welcome to the Black Parade” with almost completely different lyrics and a vastly truncated structure, while the original version of “House of Wolves” is almost completely unrecognizable when compared to what ended up on the album. Other songs, like “Emily,” “Party at the End of the World,” “My Way Home Is Through You,” and “All the Angels” got left on the cutting room floor almost entirely. There were some tracks from this period of the band that probably would have made for welcome additions to The Black Parade (“Kill All Your Friends,” with some tweaking, could have been an all-time My Chem song, while the live performance of “Somebody Out There Loves You” from this period shows what a post-The Black Parade My Chem might have sounded like if they didn’t reinvent themselves). Still other songs, like “Mama” and “Disenchanted,” were already almost fully formed, but the process of putting them back together in the studio clearly enhanced their arrangement and performance greatly.

All of this work just goes to show that The Black Parade was no accident, either in its musical accomplishments or its massive success. This album’s creation was extremely meticulous, and I have a somewhat conflicted relationship to it; on the one hand, it’s very hard to deny it’s a modern rock classic, and its story (about a cancer patient reflecting on his failings, going through the afterlife, and eventually getting another chance to redeem himself) is something that gained much greater resonance for me early this year, after I spent nine days in the hospital thinking I might die. But on the other hand, while I don’t begrudge the band itself for being calculating nor for indulging their classic rock influences, I do begrudge the music press for finally acknowledging their talent only after they decide to bring back dinosaur rock sounds and aesthetics. It’s exactly why critics fell for the theatrics (and ultimately empty politics and massaged, flat sound) of Green Day’s American Idiot; bands that Hot Topic kids enjoy are only acceptable for “adults” to like once they engage in already-established rock buffoonery. It’s not My Chem’s fault that The Black Parade canonized them, but I find myself bitter at the establishment for doing so anyway.

As for The Black Parade itself, well, it’s a near-unimpeachable record, a collection of painstakingly interwoven songs and themes that draws from post-hardcore roots, classic rock aesthetics and song structures, and unstoppably massive pop hooks to create a completely engrossing listening experience. Even newer, more “credible” bands, like New York’s rising emo-indie-pop-punk darlings Prince Daddy & the Hyena, are openly indebted to it (their newest record, the Wizard of Oz-esque concept album Cosmic Thrill Seekers, boasts influences from The Black Parade, while the band itself covered the album in full for one performance). Meanwhile, the smash success of the album continues to this day, as streaming numbers for it are still off the charts and many young people discovering it are convinced that it’s the pinnacle of emo. There’s some reservations to be had about that tag being applied to The Black Parade for sure (it’s an incredible record, but their prior material draws much more from the classical “emo” well), not least because My Chem could now no longer be any further from the DIY ideals of what “emo” originally meant, but it’s hard for me to deny that The Black Parade is, in essence, the peak of many young people’s emotional attachment to any music, and represents that intrinsic bond between performer and audience that I think emo is all about. And anyway, The Black Parade smokes.

I’m actually not a huge fan of the production– I think it’s a little compressed and messy– but there’s so much going on that it’s hard to argue for a more spartan mix, anyhow. The guitar work is indescribably good– interlocking, circuitous vortexes of pop, post-hardcore, and dinosaur rock melting together and wrestling around with each other, creating some truly fantastic sonic textures throughout. Otter has left for spurious reasons, so Bob Bryar, former soundman for the Used, is manning the kit, and his playing is, for lack of a better term, more “rock” and less “punk” than Otter’s speedy-but-light drumming style. Bryar’s drumming is a lot heavier and harder-hitting, somewhat reminiscent of Dave Grohl’s work in Nirvana, giving The Black Parade‘s tones a somewhat more monolithic quality (though he still knows how to ease up on the album’s softer tracks). I don’t think Bryar does the Bullets material the same sort of snotty justice that Otter did, but I don’t think Otter could have pulled off the marching-band vibe nor the massive fill before the first proper verse in “Welcome to the Black Parade,” either.

The Ways have simply rocketed to another level of performance with The Black Parade— Mikey has developed into a solid utility player, but when he is given moments to shine, like the bridge of “The Sharpest Lives,” he shows a complete and total mastery of tone and melody on bass that proves he isn’t just there to provide the low end. Meanwhile, Gerard is an animal on this record– no longer just working with pure passion, he has evolved into a gifted and rubbery singer, mining his upper register for some of the most expressive and forceful vocal work in the genre to that point.

The change in purpose between Three Cheers and Parade is immediately noticeable when you press play; “The End” begins with ambient sound effects, acoustic guitar, and a lush piano performance in the background, while Gerard has never sounded more like a preacher speaking to his enraptured followers (when he says “nothing at all” at the end of the second verse, he actually kind of sounds like he’s having a stroke). The melody is uniquely dirgey and funereal, but doesn’t dwell in it for long before launching into the uptempo boogie “Dead!”, which is one of my personal favorite My Chem songs– an excellent solo from Ray Toro aside, the bridge and climax of the song is pure, unadulterated My Chemical Romance, cinematic and communal and intimate all at once, and the inclusions of strings, horns, and piano are shockingly welcome.

The rest of the album cycles through more straightforwardly post-hardcore-indebted tunes and songs that play with classic rock tropes and conventions. “This Is How I Disappear” boasts a monstrous, menacing bridge section, while “The Sharpest Lives” (another song about Gerard’s tumultuous relationship with Bert McCracken) stocks up on nifty vocal and guitar effects to sculpt a thick soundscape. Both songs are stacked with knockout, stadium-ready choruses– watching the band perform them live in a massive Mexico City amphitheater on the Black Parade Is Dead! DVD feels like you’re seeing the songs be played the way they were always meant. Meanwhile, other tracks play exactly the role you expect them to play in rock operas; the piano-driven ballad “Cancer” functions as the emotional and structural centerpiece and lynchpin of the record, for example (and it’s a beautiful song, as long as you focus on the soppy strings and ignore some of the more obvious AutoTune). Other tracks are more blatant about copying classic rock artists– the end of the solo in “I Don’t Love You” cops the solo from “We Are the Champions,” for example, while the pre-chorus of the rollicking standout “House of Wolves” nakedly rips off KISS’s “Detroit Rock City”– but all those tricks up their sleeves are merely ancillary to the magnum opus of the record and the most definitive moment of My Chemical Romance’s career, “Welcome to the Black Parade.”

“Parade” is a perfect song– its five-minute run time slides by in mere moments, while its symphonically-derived structure throws everything at the wall, and it all sticks. From the melancholic-yet-triumphant piano intro to its punky main body and its ascendant, downright beautiful climax, the song is a three-part paean to both rock music of the past and the moment that My Chem were occupying. They were the center of attention in mainstream rock during this record cycle, and this song shows that they were more than deserving of that honor. It’s by now cliche to observe that “Welcome to the Black Parade” is the “emo generation”‘s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but I’ll be damned if it isn’t an accurate observation; no song of the era comes close to matching its anthemic qualities nor its near-universal appeal.

I’ve seen criticisms that The Black Parade doesn’t know when to stop putting its foot on the gas, but I’m inclined to disagree. There’s not one but three weepy ballads on this record, all of which slow down the energy of the record without sacrificing their strength or infectious qualities. “I Don’t Love You” is a borderline-hateful anti-love song, but Gerard’s vocal performance and the lush, sticky instrumentation make it sound completely genuine. I’ve covered “Cancer” already, but the penultimate track “Disenchanted” is an often-underrated cut from The Black Parade; I myself used to have some reservations about it, but after my aforementioned hospital stay I found myself embracing its regretful-yet-empowering energy more than anything else on the record. Plus, it’s got a solid, offhanded sex joke– the song describes the speaker’s life as a movie and says that it “started with an alright scene.”

“House of Wolves” would have probably been the most straightforwardly “rock ‘n’ roll” track on the record (and it is an excellent song), but the bluesy chord progression of late-album standout “Teenagers” just barely tops it, with some jaunty piano adding to the atmosphere and Gerard’s lyrics about a school shooter terrified of his own generation speaking to a subset of disaffected, angry teenagers who otherwise might not have found a constructive or harmless outlet for their aggression.

And lest you assume that The Black Parade has completely abandoned My Chem’s heavier inclinations for classic rock pretensions, the one-two punch of the unremittingly hard-hitting bangers “Mama” and “Sleep” puts that assumption to rest. “Mama” is a weird-as-fuck number, with a mandolin-inspired guitar intro and despairing lyrics about a war criminal reckoning with his horrible actions immediately putting the listener in discomfort, but it progresses into the best song of the album: a mean, off-kilter, disorienting bridge with woozy guitar work; a brief and memorable guest appearance from Liza Minelli; an apocalyptic shanty-like outro; what more could you want? “Sleep” is more straightforwardly hard rock, but the earth-shattering drum intro and its overwhelming, scream-infused climax make up for its structural simplicity while it boasts by far the most bleak and angry lyrics on the whole record.

So what’s keeping The Black Parade from being My Chemical Romance’s stab at perfection? That’d be the closer, “Famous Last Words,” which absolutely wastes an incredible riff from Ray Toro in favor of an unfittingly uplifting lyrical showing and a weak central structure. I mean, come on– “I am not afraid to keep on living”? I don’t doubt that this song means a lot to the kids who needed (and continue to need) it, but I can’t forgive the way that this song just goes nowhere and peters out at the end, especially after the purposeful and epic tone of the rest of the record leading up to it. I will say that the live performance of it on The Black Parade Is Dead redeems the song somewhat; it sounds much more powerful and deliberate in a live setting, rather than lumbering and heavy-handed (it’s also worth watching just to see James DeWees of Reggie & the Full Effect/formerly of the Get-Up Kids have an absolute blast playing keyboards for a band at the height of their mainstream moment). At least the hidden track, the morbidly funny “Blood,” provides some levity to such a thematically dark and heavy record.

The Black Parade marked a huge sea change for My Chemical Romance; the haters either came around to them, as in the case of music journalists, or just ignored them and accepted them as an inescapable part of the pop landscape, as in the case of the everyday neanderthals who shook their heads at the band’s success.

It also marked a shift in My Chemical Romance’s attitude to their own music– there was a relatively massive four-year gap between this record and their follow up (and we will get to that in due time), wherein the members focused on touring the record and devoting more time to their friends and families. The most notable musical export from this time of the band is Frank Iero’s hardcore band, Leathermouth, which released the bristly and bilious XO in 2009 to warm commercial and critical response and a less-than-enthusiastic response from the US government (who would have thought they wouldn’t be a fan of song titles like “I’m Going to Kill the President of the United States”?). The most notable non-music export was Gerard Way’s comic book series, The Umbrella Academy, a Doom Patrol-meets-A-Series-of-Unfortunate-Events outing that garnered a pretty large cult following and, I gather, a movie? Or something? I think something big happened with it recently, but I can’t find anything about it online.

Still, it would be extremely hard to try and top the theatricality of The Black Parade‘s concept and tour performances, which featured Gerard Way being brought out on a stretcher as The Patient and the band playing the record in its entirety. Why would they even bother? It would just to lead to catastrophe.

DESTROYA

Well, try they did. Much in the same way as the band created an alter ego, the Black Parade, for their previous album, they created the Killjoys for 2010’s Danger Days, a group of post-apocalyptic freedom fighters who apparently love extremely boring rock music. The concept of Danger Days and its associated extended universe makes literally zero sense to me, but aside from that, the album is a horrible mess, full of downright deliberately annoying choruses (“Na Na Na [Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na]”), weepy-even-by-My-Chem-standards ballads (“Summertime”), and ill-advised dabbling with misguided and ugly hard rock (“Destroya”). Elsewhere, there’s boring, go-nowhere songs completely void of ideas like “Bulletproof Heart” and “Sing,” and even worse, dance songs that completely forgo catchiness, like “Planetary (Go!)”. The whole record is embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as the legion of kids who somehow try to claim that it’s either better than it’s given credit for or, bafflingly, some kind of misunderstood masterpiece. I’ve seen claims that it belongs somewhere in the sass lineage, which is both confusing and offensive to me personally as a defender of all things sass. The only redeemable song on the album for me is the bitingly funny closer “Vampire Money,” a savage kiss-off that fits nowhere into the ham-fisted narrative of the record and mostly functions as a fuck-you to the band being asked to contribute a song for the Twilight movies (not that there’s anything wrong with that, right, Paramore?).

If that had been the last we’d heard of My Chemical Romance, it would have been sad, but I would have understood. The thing that was vastly more frustrating was, immediately prior to the band’s breakup, a series of five singles that comprised the record they almost made before scrapping it and making Danger Days from scratch, known as Conventional Weapons. These songs are not just really good, they make me wish that that had been the record we’d gotten instead, and furthermore, they make me really angry that My Chem broke up before fulfilling the promise that these songs so obviously showed.

For almost any doubters of My Chemical Romance, I often point to the first track released from these sessions, the extremely energetic “Boy Division,” which feels almost exactly like a Three Cheers era My Chem track, but with a bouncy, destructive breakdown near the end. All ten of these songs are worth hearing, but it’s “Boy Division” and the late-era standout “Make Room!!” that are most worth your time. Elsewhere, you’ve got the James Bond-esque groove of “Tomorrow’s Money” and the restless-yet-relaxed “Ambulance” and “Gun.” proving that My Chem could have made yet another timeless record had they had the time. The slow-burning “The World Is Ugly” and the string-driven epic “The Light Behind Your Eyes” evoke their traditional goth influences, “Kiss the Ring” is the unstoppable rocker that Green Day wish they could have been writing in 2009, and “Surrender the Night” and “Burn Bright” are both garage-y bangers that presage the direction Danger Days could have gone had they not succumbed to their impulses to top The Black Parade‘s conceptual strength and tightness. My Chemical Romance: a story of unfulfilled potential, sadly enough.

FAKE YOUR DEATH

And yet, while My Chemical Romance broke up in 2013, signifying the death of their incarnation of emo in the mainstream, they were not forgotten– they live on, both in the past members’ solo projects and the mark they made on the lost generation of millennials who called their music home.

I’ve written before at length how 2013 was a major year for mainstream “emo,” not just because My Chemical Romance broke up, but because an entirely new type of emo-that-wasn’t-emo started cropping up. It could be the vacuous posturing of Twenty One Pilots, or it could be the restless DIY output of truly emo- and hardcore-influenced rappers like Bones, but just because rock music was no longer the zeitgeist didn’t mean that the emotions that made My Chemical Romance megastars went away overnight. As I said in my article on Lil Peep, the music might change, but teenagers don’t. And as the former members of My Chem continue on their path to elder statesmen of the scene– whether it be the Bright Eyes-esque rag of Frank Iero’s series of solo albums, Ray Toro’s airy, Smashing Pumpkins-influenced alt rock, or Gerard Way’s haunting and effervescently catchy post-punk– it’s never been more clear that My Chemical Romance were not a flash in the pan, latching onto a moment in youth culture that only lasted as long as there was money to be made.

Say what you will about My Chem’s authenticity– their major-label work was for the most part excellent, but their indie work proved that they had the talent and work ethic to make it from the get-go– but they were pillars of a movement, one that was started in the 80s by the underground hardcore scene and one that was fostered throughout the 90s and 2000s by acts as disparate as Jawbreaker, Every Time I Die, American Nightmare, and Fall Out Boy. My Chemical Romance was not just the commercial high-water mark of that movement, they were an artistic and social high-water mark as well; for every kid in America who has been depressed, bullied, or just plain miserable at some point in their lives, My Chemical Romance might have been the band that helped them get through some truly hard times, or ushered them into a more DIY and personal scene that helped give them purpose. My Chem were never a band that made it seem cool to be miserable, at least not to anyone who was actually paying attention. They made it cool to try and fight your way through that misery.

To ask if I am embarrassed of being a fan of My Chemical Romance, a band that has meant so much to me and millions of other people, a band that made near-objectively fantastic music for most of its run, a band that provided an open door from the endless drudgery of everyday life to the freedom of DIY, punk, emo, hardcore, and making your life what you want it to be, is to insult everything that I stand for. My Chemical Romance might have been a band that you weren’t supposed to like, but I always hated being told what to do, and I resent even further being told what to think, enjoy, or listen to.

From Las Vegas theatre kids making baroque dance-pop to straight-edge Chicago softcore to gross pop to existential pop-punk to riotous post-pop-punk to Christian metalcore to white-belted scenecore to gothic pop-hardcore to DIY Soundcloud emo rap to My Chemical Romance, everything I’ve touched on in this series is part of me, and hopefully, if you’ve followed along for everything I’ve done so far, it’s part of you, too. Even if it isn’t, hopefully you understand why it’s part of me, what it means to me, and what it means to the people who are like me.

I’ve been going to DIY hardcore shows for well over a decade now, and I’ve been involved in Internet forums about hardcore, skramz, emo, hip-hop, and what-have-you for even longer, and the one thing that’s never changed is that there’s always self-righteous dickheads who are quick to assert the superiority of who and what they enjoy at the expense of people who may have needed something else to get to the same place. At the end of the day, who we are as people is constantly changing, and I’m eternally grateful for all the pieces of the puzzle that helped make me who I am today, and I’m grateful for everything that will change me in the future.

So to all the kids who are like me, the kids who needed Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance in their lives no matter how deep they went down the rabbit hole of obscure 90s hardcore and emo, the kids who eventually developed addictions after breaking edge and had to white-knuckle it out with the help of friends, lovers, and cigarettes, the kids who needed to hear someone else say that it was okay and normal to feel like shit and think about killing yourself as long as you got some help, the kids who have never known what the fuck to make of their gender or their sexuality or their nightmarish anxiety, the kids who keep the lessons they learned close to their hearts, this article was for you, this series was for you, and everything I write, in some form or another, is for you, and it’s for me, too. I’m not nearly self-important and arrogant enough to think that people care about what I think, or that I’m making a difference, but I truly hope that, if you identify with anything I just said, you know you aren’t alone because I’m here, too. We’ll carry on.

-XO, Ellie