On I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, My Chemical Romance found a way to tell them to keep on living.Īnd they did it with style. In practice, it allowed outsiders experiencing MCR permission to exorcize the high drama of their mundane lives, to feel included in their narrative storytelling. On the surface, a lyrical line like the one in “Halos” is ripe for an AOL instant messenger away message. The entire album is hyperbole-earnest with some bite, but no irony-a request to the listener to find some metaphorical solace within its riff. Demons became catalysts for real life problems like antidepressants and alcohol abuse (“Honey This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two Of Us”), PTSD, and suicidal ideation (“Headfirst for Halos,” where Way sings, “And as the fragments of my skull begin to fall / Fall on your tongue like pixie dust / Just think happy thoughts!”). (It didn’t hurt that he could actually sing, unlike his many tone-deaf screamo contemporaries.) MCR didn’t sound anything like the third wave emo in the scene at the time, like Brand New and Taking Back Sunday, or the downer pop-punk of Jimmy Eat World and Saves the Day-it was all of that, filtered through Manchurian riffs, theatrical percussion (hell, the thing kicks off with a haunted take on “Romance Anónimo,” a guitar instrumental dating back to 19 th century parlor music), embellished with the tongue-in-cheek darkness of Way’s comic book ideologies. During the recording, Gerard had some dental procedure, a sore jaw, and after Eyeball Records co-founded Alex Saavedra clocked him in the mouth, it was physical agony that allowed him to deliver an in studio-performance that mirrored the intensity of his o-stage power. I Brought You My Bullets is pained, raw, raucous. Rickly produced the album, his first time behind the board, and the magic was captured. (Thursday had just released their fan favorite LP, Full Collapse, becoming New Jersey scene celebrities in the process.) It didn’t do much to sway Rickly, except, of course, a few days later Mikey tossed the Thursday frontman a CD demo of the track-a vampire noir with a 187 BPM tempo, the first time Gerard had ever heard his voice recorded-and it was clear: something special was happening. He convinced his brother Gerard to play it then and there-begrudgingly-in an attempt to convince Rickly to produce his nascent band. Bullets has its own folklore: Mikey Way, then a 21-year-old intern at Eyeball Records, cornered Thursday’s Geoff Rickly at a house party and told him that his new band, titled My Chemical Romance, had a song, “Vampires Will Never Hurt You,” that he would love. The band formed quickly: metallic virtuoso Ray Toro on lead guitar, hardcore spazz Frank Iero on rhythm, bookish Mikey Way on bass, rounded out by local drummer Matt Pelissier. After watching the Twin Towers fall, frontman Gerard Way abandoned a nascent career as a cartoonist and illustrator for places like Cartoon Network to write vaudevillian gothics on guitar: emo and Misfits-informed horror-punk, filtered through his ever-present love of Britpop and glam. My Chemical Romance was born out of 9/11. And it started 20 years ago, when they recorded their first full-length LP, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love at Nada Recording Studio in New Windsor, New York in May 2002 over two weeks. They were a group of high school outcasts like any other, fortified by an undeniable ability to articulate the histrionics of adolescence, the torture of mental difference, the terror of being shoved into a locker too many times into song. Even then, something peculiar was happening: one of the biggest rock bands of the millennium was performing like they already knew what was to come.īefore the bulletproof vests, the black military uniforms, and the critical reevaluation of what is maybe the most influential rock ‘n’ roll band since Nirvana, My Chemical Romance were horror nerds from New Jersey. The clip, captured in their 2006 documentary Life on the Murder Scene, is likely shot at one of My Chemical Romance’s earliest shows in 2002 or 2003. His hands are folded behind his back, and he’s bobbing his neck back and forth, up and down, both mimicking awkward fellatio and performing some perverted contortion, a traveling freak show. He’s in an ill fitting suit, dripping in fake blood, screaming straight from the gut: “Just! Because! My! Hand’s! Around! Your! Throat!” The microphone is in his mouth it might as well have traveled down his throat and struck his heart. Only frontman Gerard Way makes himself available to their locked gaze. Four-fifths of My Chemical Romance avert their anxious eyes away from the crowd. The camera shakes, the pictures blurs, the lighting leaves a lot to be desired, and the stage is nondescript in the manner of suburban VFW halls.
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