In Defense of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

When I was eleven years old, I briefly thought that The Black Parade was a clothing brand.  It seemed to only exist in the context of the middle school cafeteria, splayed in sprawling black lettering across the t-shirts of kids who were older and cooler than me.  They wore their dyed hair in deep side-parted bangs, paired their black skinny jeans with stacked chokers, posted feminist takes on their Tumblr accounts and called themselves lesbians without batting an eye.  By the time my coming of age had properly started, mall goth was on its death rattle; its life supported exclusively by the fascination of borderline-pubescents.  I was secretly desperate to be one of them.  When that little skeleton icon finally crossed my Pandora radio, I listened with bated breath and, against my better judgment, dared to like the song.  It was a risky move.  My father worships two things in this life: the Protestant trinity and Pink Floyd.  Well aware of the stoner culture associated with the latter and determined to raise children oriented towards the former, he regularly searched my iPod touch for evidence of any unapproved musical influence.  This, of course, covered My Chem with an even heavier coat of forbidden allure.  With its macabre subject matter, wailing vocals, and a swear word stuck right in the center of the chorus, that first taste of “Teenagers” was so addicting because it was so under the table.  Falling in love with My Chemical Romance’s discography became a slow but certain process; occurring over many years spent longingly gazing at the mall’s Hot Topic, then turning around and begging my parents for Southern Sunsets t-shirts.  I fell into my emo phase the way you fall asleep: slowly, at first, then embarrassingly late. 

Like many musical projects that have taken hold of a particular zeitgeist, it can be hard to say exactly what My Chemical Romance is.  Depending on who you asked and when you asked them, you could easily find the group described as a cultural movement, a cash grab, a cult of personality, a meme, or a fashion statement.  Broken down to their simplest form, they’re a pop punk quintet who had the mixed fortune of rising to fame at a time when the musical landscape was saturated by the genre.  Their origin story has gained infamy as a butterfly effect apex: in 2001, a failing cartoonist named Gerard Way witnessed the collapse of the Twin Towers during his commute to a Cartoon Network internship from his parent’s basement in New Jersey.  One epiphany and several phone calls later, he formed a band called My Chemical Romance, named by brother and bassist Mikey Way after the tagline of an Irvine Welsh novel.  Within a year, they released their first album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love through local distributor Eyeball Records.  Within two, they had committed the cardinal punk sin of signing to a major record label and released Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, which would be marketed as their debut. 

From here we could connect MCR’s impact to names like Stephenie Meyer and Ellen DeGeneres, but instead let’s focus on the center of this cultural web.  It’s undeniable that My Chem would go on to be an aesthetically defining element of emo’s third wave- ask your mom to tell you what emo means and she’ll likely describe the black-and-red suits, monochrome marching band or racoon-rim eyeliner that would become staples of the band’s various stage personas- but musically and ideologically, the group has little in common with the genre its name has become synonymous with.  It’s hard to argue that the band didn’t benefit from the use of one of the most marketable labels of its time, but amidst our nostalgic longing for an imagined angsty past, it’s easy to forget that being called emo was and is a bit of a double-edged sword.  On one side, MCR found itself dismissed as traitors to DIY and punk ethos (stay local, stay abrasive, stay poor), and on the other they became the whipping boy for a moral panic surrounding teenage suicide.  This dichotomy has colored postmortem analysis of the band’s original run, creating a false collective memory of what they were, and perhaps just as important, where they came from.  Distinctly stylized, concept-minded and intentionally androgynous, My Chem’s DNA has more in common with glam and arena rock acts than anything deriving from post-hardcore.  Look a little closer at Revenge’s protagonist and you’ll see something a bit like Ziggy Stardust if you gave him a gun and a LiveJournal account.   

Each My Chemical Romance album is billed as a rock opera, often employing concepts so absurd they appear to be the result of a Halloween themed Mad Libs game.  The neglected debut Bullets follows a couple who are turned into vampires by their drug dealer, only to be struck down in their undead prime.  Revenge picks up where this story left off.  When one of our characters is resurrected to find the other still dead, he makes a deal with the devil to be reunited with his lover.  In exchange, he’s tasked with killing a thousand evil men.  This sets off a game of cat-and-mouse as our protagonist weaves in and out of prisons, seedy motels, and western style gunfights, filling his quota and evading the ghost of his disapproving lover.  The tale ends with a punchline: after reaching kill 999 he realizes that the final evil man is himself, and the pair’s promised reunion takes place back in the afterlife they’d been tempted to escape.   

Though their penultimate record The Black Parade is (accurately) distinguished as the band’s magnum opus, Revenge captures them at their most quintessential.  As you probably expect, it’s an album obsessed with death.  This obsession is in part inspired by real-life events, with the opening track “Helena” being named after the Way’s recently deceased grandmother.  But for as real as the album’s emotional touchstones may be, it remains as fantastical and absurd as you could hope.  The record’s lyricism doesn’t hesitate to revel in its kitschy displays of violence, striking a tone somewhere between a pre-code comic book and a straight-to-DvD horror sequel.  The rest of the band matches this standard with driving riffs and pop-y solos, the result is the sonic equivalent of a box of sugary cereal your mom won’t let you eat.  Its references range from tabletop RPGs to William Faulkner short stories, and if My Chem sees any difference in their respective cultural value, they aren’t letting on.  Each song is hook-drenched, fast-paced, and deliciously, wonderfully stupid.  It’s melodrama distilled to its purest form.  Every reason it’s dismissed is a reason it should be celebrated: the intense sincerity of its delivery, the unshakable tie to time and place, the weirdness of the kids who have kept it alive.  Cut the fingers off your gloves, hold the chipped-black polished hands of your thirteen-year-old self, and treat yourself to thirty-nine minutes of pop perfection.  You’ll find something in there to love (I Promise).