The Foundation of Decay feels like the perfect continuation of Dangers Days (and aspects of Conventional Weapons and to some extend, the Black Parade) in that MCR has continuous themes of death and rebirth. Every album since Revenge has tried to shed the image and expectations of albums past, but they have struggled against their fans expectations of them. Foundations is an expression of this internal "rot" that comes when the world is demanding you be something that is impossible to fufill.
TBP is the shedding of a mortal body into a new life beyond this one. Danger Days has one of the parade's skeletons in the desert (and Gerard Way has described the birth of the Killjoys as a shedding of conductor's white makeup to reveal the radiant colour underneath.) The narrative of The Dangerous Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys is the story of them dying in battle against a greater power, the next apocaylpse using The Destroyer, and making room for a new life via The Child. This is also demonstrated through the comic book where the Killjoys only appear as costumed mannequins, as symbols of the people who existed. The only two narrative music videos that came out of this album were NaNaNa where it shows them living those "dangerous lives", and their ultimate demise as they rescue the Child.
For decades fans cry out "MCR saved my life!" and they try to tell them, "YOU saved YOUR OWN life," but they are ignored. People have kept telling them who they are, who they're supposed to be, what they have stood for in our personal lives.
In their last released song since 2014, "Fake Your Death", they are killing the band and escaping into the sunset. They say, we are tired, we are exhausted, we want to be free. It causes them pain to go on at that point, and they can't bear it anymore. They want to be free of what people keep demanding from them as icons.
The Foundations of Decay is a return, of sorts, but it is one of MANY call outs of their audience. They keep telling their audience over and over again that they can not be everything we want them to be. What MCR was is long dead, and all that remains is a rotting carcas, ruins of an altar that we made ourselves in their image, and image they barely wanted in the first place.
There is a back and forth in the song where they express their own feelings, and the crowd returns with what they've always wanted from them.
Against faith (Antihero) Against all life (As if it must be pure) Against change (Wander through the ruins) We are free (The guiltiness is yours)
In this song MCR is canonized, an altar built in their name, towers risen to combat the trauma of 9/11 and create something new. But all of this is built on a rotten foundation of fan expectations. It has been so long since MCR "died" in Fake Your Death that MCR as a concept has rotted, and we (the fans) are flies picking at a corpse. I think this is easily seen in the Foundations video where the flies crawling over the screen almost look like the undulating movement of a mosh pit.
At first listen, I thought the end of the song was them talking to themselves, but I think now it's a call to the audience. By the end of the song they are asking their fans to lift THEMSELVES up. MCR can not carry you anymore, because they have long been dead. They have stopped fighting for you, and for themselves, and through that they have been freed of the chains and limitations of what MCR used to mean. They are telling you to kill who you used to be, and create something new in the foundations of who you are, as they have done countless times before.
Yes, it comforts me much more Yes, it comforts me much more To lay in the foundations of decay Get up, coward!
