My Chemical Romance Appriciation Blog

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This is a simple blog...

I’ll be spewing photos, quotes, and music of My Chemical Romance from yesteryear to the foreseeable future, cause I need an outlet for this rush of adrenaline of a new era of MCR.

I’m just sharing what I have, my experiences, and my love for these guys (and maybe making it easier for folks to consume media).

kthxbai

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01/2004 - NME

“EXTREMORRISSEY!

Venue: Night & Day

Date: Tuesday January 13

Time on stage: 10pm

The backpacked and bespectacled gather - appropriately - in Manchester for extreamo Morrissey and his band

Usually Sadchester’s none-more-indie hangout and home to acoustic nights and members of Elbow, tonight the NIght and Day has been descended on by hordes of fiercely serious backpacked and bespectacled emo souls. Uncharacteristically for this venue, the atmosphere swiftly reaches fever pitch when a white projector screen (usually employed playing old art-house films) rises to reveal My Chemical Romance’s long-haired pretty-boy singer Gerard Way - clad in black gloves and jacket - in a typical mentalist pose.

Instantly unleashing a cocophany of ear-shredding screams on opener “Honey, This MIrror Ain’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us”, It’s clear that he didn’t gatecrash last year’s NME Cool LIst for nothing. Charging round the stage like a Ritalin-deficient toddler, Gerard permanently apperas to be on the verge of a nasty bout of projectile vomiting, pulling a range of comically camp facial expressions. Visually, any murmured comparisons with Morrissey seem more than little misguided. However, the emotional vulnerability laced in his lyrics - for example the way “Headfirst For Halos’ takes a melodramatic introspection of The Smith’s classic ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ and mainlines it with a rabid punker fury - leaves him at least sounding like a extreamo embodiment of the Bard of Manic Misery. On other highlights such as ‘Vampires Will Never Hurt You’ and ‘Drowning Lessons’ - taken from debut album over here “I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love’ - guitarist Ray Toro and Frank Iero more than match his feral vocal delivery, conjuring wave after thunderous wave of brutal guitar noise. While it’d be harsh to call My Chemical Romance The Gerard Show, tonight all he lacks is a cape and mask to stop him from transforming into a full-blown extreamo superhero. If the genre is to avoid the same swift fate as its spiritual cousin nu-metal, it needs more characters like this fighting for the cause. Tonight My Chemical Romance's star quality leaves the rest of the chasing pack choking on their dust. Rick Martin

Gig Report:

High Point - The beginning where Gerard appears from behind a screen, lapping up the adoration of emo geeks.

Best Song - ‘Headfirst For Halos’

In A Word  - Gerard

Performance - From King: Bad Loser to Fordham: People’s Hero? Result is People’s Hero.“

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01/2004 - Rock Sound

Left to Right: Ray Toro, Frank Iero, Gerard Way, Mikey Way, Matt Pelissier (not in photo)

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11/2003 - Revolver

“My Chemical Romance

Album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love (Eyeball)

Sounds Like This hyperactive dose of melodic aggression delivers more off-the-cuff emotion than lovelorn teenager, while at the same time providing the perfect soundtrack to work it all out in the pit.

Fun Fact My Chemical Romance’s CD was produced by none other than Thursday’s Geoff Rickly.

This has been a quick fix No. 36

One more band you should know about.”

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07/2003 - SPIN

“My Chemical Romance

Backed by this New Jersey Band’s scream-o roar, singer Gerard Way works out his obsessions with bats, vampires, and Morrissey. Thursday vocalist Geoff Rickly produced MCR’s debut album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. (Leather Jacket by Levi’s Vintage; vintage Motorhead t-shirt from Search and Destroy.) “

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05/2003 - Rock Sound

My Chemical Romance

“The problem with trying to please everyone is that you inevitably end up pleasing no one. A band whose style fluctuates along the great genre landscape, and borrows from variety of different influences, is usually left with a sound that is not cohesive and is difficult to comprehend. The art of eclecticism is a challenging one, especially today when there are so many different bands and so many divisions upon divisions of scenes, but it is one that My Chemical Romance masters skillfully. I guess the first thing that people are going to want to talk about is the Thursday connection. Yes, Geoff Rickly produced their album; yes, MCR are on Eyeball Records, Thursday’s first label; yes, MCR singer, Gerard Way designed several Thursday T-shirts. Cool. Can we move on? My Chemical Romance walk the fine line that many others can only dream about treading. Their sound is an amalgamation of emo, goth, hardcore, and even a little pop. They blend all these elements tastefully, due to large part to Gerard’s vocals. His voice is round, powerful and skilled, but at the same time coarse and raw. Live it comes across better than anything capable of being captured on tape , and the dark subject matter (gothic themes of vampires, churches, mirrors, bullets, hospitals, and blood) are what make My Chemical Romance so appealing to kids. They express cliched emotions through dark metaphors, allowing the listener to experience these feelings without being cheesy about it. ‘I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love’, begins with an instrumental guitar piece, “Romance’, that sounds like it belongs in a Spanish Mariachi vampire movie. Then the metal opening riff of ‘ Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us’ , blasts the album open. The kids favorite, ‘ Vampires Will Never Hurt You, ‘ comes next. Nice titles, huh? My Chemical Romance’s unique style has earned them a strong fanbase in a short amount of time, and has thus afforded them the opportunity to tour with established bans like The Used, Taking Back Sunday, and Finch. Those of you who had the change to catch MCR with The Used in the UK last month can attest to the power and uniqueness of this band. Those of you who have yet to hear them, don’t worry - it won’t be long before you won’t be able to avoid them.”

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04/2003 - ALTERNATIVE PRESS

In some circles, hardcore is the healing power of the universe.

“After Gerard Way, singer for the post-everything quintet, My Chemical Romance, branded his art onto T-shirts for Thursday, it would seem only appropriate for Thursday mouthpiece Geoff Rickly to produce MCR’s debut album, right? Okay, so it’s not like Rickly owed them a favor or anything - he was actually eager to work with the band. “Basically, Alex Saavedra over at Eyeball Records was backing us, and he was cool for putting [our record] out.” Way explains. “Then we played for Geoff, and he was really excited about it and wanted to work on the project.”

As for the time spent in the studio it ended up being a substitute for time the singer could have spent horizontally on some couch discussing his feelings. Way recalls a year that pretty much took him through the emotional wringer (consult “Headfirst For Halos” for a year-in-review), leaving the band’s music as refuge not only for him, but for the rest of MCR - Matt Pelissier, Ray Toro, Way’s brother Mikey, and Frank Iero.

For me, it was the whole nine-feeling suicidal, being in therapy, being on anti-depressants, a healthy dose of relationship problems, mixed with some family illness - that just made for a really bad year.” Way recalls. “I feel like [the band] was a way for us to really fulfill our destiny and deal with all the bad shit that happens.”

As a public display of his appreciation, Way will occasionally - and apologetically - sport an MCR shirt on stage. And we all know the rules: 1.) Don’t wear a bands T-shirt to the band’s show, and 2.) Don’t wear your band’s T-Shirt to your show. Way throws rule No. 2 with a simple explanation, “Iron Maiden used to wear their own T-Shirts because they believed in their band that much, and I’m the same way. We’re all the same way.” - Lycia Strum

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May 12, 2022 - Release of “The Foundation of Decay” media photos.