My Chemical Romance’s latest effort isn’t so much an album release as a well orchestrated apocalyptic art event. With the advent of listening parties the band last night offered fans worldwide an exclusive preview of the album as hosted by the elusive Dr. Death Defying.
Apparently this is the bands departure from concept albums, but you tell me, fans are ‘killjoys’, areas are ‘zones’, enemies are ‘draculoids.’ Now personally I don’t care about this, they are great at what they do and this whole new world is utterly engrossing, so why change? Though this is still a concept album, it’s a massive leap from their previous sound with everything bright, poppy, and dripping electro from its very core.
Within the first three songs two singles are showcased. The world has already heard ‘Na Na Na’ and is undoubtedly sick of having it infused in their brains, but ‘Sing’ is relatively new and I’m sure it will sneak its way into the charts. Structured like a 30 Seconds To Mars song it seems a bit too epic for such an early place on the album, but it does have some more traditional My Chem breakdowns thrown in.
The gig is a sell out, the band on the other hand are not…
My Chemical Romance are getting bigger by the year and now, with the release of Danger Days, they are set to go astronomical. The band had some trouble after The Black Parade with the departure of drummer Bob Bryar, an entire album scrapped, and about two years away from touring everything could have been a bit of a disaster for them. Luckily for them they know what they’re doing.
Storming on stage to riotous applause they waste no time and get straight into new single ‘Na Na Na’ out of the four or so new songs they play, which are all tinged with electro, this sounds the most polished and is a rowdy opener to get people going.
When you see My Chem you go to see a show rather than just a band, yet this was more of a minimal affair with little in the way of crowd-banter or showmanship. This new low-key style fit perfectly with their set which consisted of songs mainly from Three Cheers. This was a band embracing their roots with some ballsy pseudo-aggressive rock. Gerard stalked the stage like he was genuinely pissed off and even invited one lucky crowd member on stage to help sing ‘Honey This Mirror Aint Big Enough for the Two of Us’ from debut album Bullets. He was greeted on stage to “If you dare ask for fucking photo you’re gone” and then proceeded to miss the song queue three times. Fans eh?
With only the one song from Bullets played some of the older fans were inevitably disappointed. Though with a very young crowd (parents were involved for under 14’s) that went nuts for singles like ‘Teenagers’ this wasn’t much of a problem. That wasn’t the only problem with the evening. The Apollo is a great venue because you can see no matter where you are and it’s a pretty perfect size for a band of their stature to seem like it’s still intimate, but the sound quality just wasn’t good enough. This was more likely a problem with the band, who had slightly adapted some intro’s the fit with the ‘space music’ in-between songs, but they never seemed to pick up the pace again ‘Ghost of You’ was a particular low-point.
Despite all this the songs they do play well ‘You know what they do to guys like us in prison’, ‘Dead!’, ‘Give em’ Hell Kid’ etc…have thousands of people screaming the words and sound flawless. When they get it right there is nothing like it.
My Chemical Romance has a lot to offer and if you’re a fan of the albums then the raw energy of seeing them live is a must.
You know, I really wish this band didn’t exist. No reflection on their music or anything – I just wish they’d bloody well made their minds up and bitten the big one when they said they would. I say this because, before they kissed and made up I had what was, very nearly, officially The Last Ever Interview with Thursday.
