Upcoming My Chemical Romance release to be a work of Self-Protest

During the recording of and through the band’s touring on their previous release The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance found themselves going through a hell-on-earth too closely resembling the sort of purgatory in which the album’s main character, The Patient, finds himself stuck.

They lived in a haunted mansion, wherein a gloom clouded them and lead singer Gerard Way developed sleep problems while bassist Mikey Way started facing demons of his own. Drummer Bob Bryar was severely burned on the set of the “Famous Last Words” video and later contracted gangrene in the wound. Rhythm guitarist Frank Iero started having health problems that sent him home for a while during their touring for Parade. Later, Bryar had to have wrist surgery while guitarist Ray Toro, who had avoided the curse until this year, found his canine companion severely sick.

Could this next album be a reversal of The Black Parade curse?

Members of MCR reveal in a feature article showcasing their upcoming album as the ‘most anticipated of 2010’ in this month’s Alternative Press magazine that there was a point when they started to live, not as My Chemical Romance, but as their alter-ego: the theatrical, ostentatious and followed-with-terrible-luck Black Parade.

Before their very brief hiatus that came after their 2008 Madison Square Garden show, MCR admit that the songs from Parade were not connecting and performing them had lost its fun. Some members of the band feared that that show could be the very last for My Chemical Romance. Some fans will recall the now well-known quote from Gerard onstage that night:

“If we never play another show again, keep yourselves alive.”

It’s eerie to think that that could have been the end, but –fortunately- it was not.

When MCR came back together, they came back with a vengeance and a handful of songs that Gerard Way referred to as “protest songs,” little did he know at the time that the songs were protesting his own band and what it had become during The Black Parade era.

They wrote with influences like The Stooges, the MC5 and The Damned in mind to create more than an album's worth of short and to-the-point songs. After a brief trip to Japan for Summer Sonic and after playing the MCRmy shows at the Roxy in L.A., the members were hit with a wave of inspiration, having seen the reactions fans had to their older material. It became apparent to them that they wanted to get back to that pre-Black Parade heart with the upcoming album.

I think the album will reflect their new, bold logo that – without frills – simply reads “My Chemical Romance.” MCR are finding a way to be MCR again, and I think they’ll do it beautifully and in a way that fans will be able to more than understand and appreciate.

Also, I think it will reflect that Madison Square Garden quote I mentioned earlier.

"The whole 'My Chemical Romance saves lives' thing is a misrepresentation," [Gerard Way told AP]. "We are grateful and touched that you got something out of our music. But, ultimately it was you who worked through your reality. That's my message to the world: Get in the clear, we'll take care of this."

The song “Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back” seems like it could potentially get this message across; as, Gerard mentions, “That song is about the importance of a believer over a victim.”

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Also revealed in the AP article is a new song title in addition to more details on some that fans already know.

Newly revealed, “The Light Behind your Eyes” is described as an atmospheric song “Sort of like the sunset before the gunfight.”

We are also given an updated title for what fans have been calling “Kiss the Ring” or “L.A. Heavy:” “Hail to the King.”


I. Can't. Wait. Much. Fucking. Longer!!

XoXo
c.