Tom: I shouldn’t like My Chemical Romance, but I do. The overblown videos, the concept albums, the teenage demographic… I should be rolling my eyes and trying to get the damn kids off my lawn. But, inconveniently, they keep producing bloody good music.
Tom: This is the second single off Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, the second concept album. If you actually care about the concept, Wikipedia (of course) has a decent write-up.
Tim: I don’t normally like concept albums – they only really work if all the songs are quite good, or at least listenable, and often they’re not. Fortunately, though, My Chemical Romance don’t seem to have a problem making this so. Hurrah! This track in particular, I like a lot – it’s not quite Famous Last Words good, but it’s on a par with Welcome to the Black Parade, the song that first got me into them.
Tom: The video is, of course, part of the whole mythos they’ve invented. The plot will almost certainly never attain any kind of coherency.
Tim: No, but then it’s not really meant to – just needs to fit in with the rest. And actually, I love it. I am slightly wondering how the next video will work, though, given that they’ve killed off the lead singer.
Tom: With laser gun battles and Stormtrooper-quality aiming in this one? A resurrection’s almost certainly on the cards.
Talk about your rousing choruses, though. They’ll play arena shows, and everyone there will be chanting this chorus along with them. It’s not catchy, tinny Europop, but it doesn’t have to be: this is music that teenagers are going to listen to in their bedrooms while they write bad poetry and pine over unrequited love. If you don’t feel your fists clench a little on the final chorus, you have no soul.