Review Summary: A violent, messy yet brooding and visceral self-elegy of self-hate, self-harm, romance, revenge, regret and death.
Emo Classics Series: Episode I
Whenever you ask a person who grew up as a teenager in the 2000s about what is their favourite emo band, the chances are you are very likely to get the answer that is
My Chemical Romance. This came as not much a surprise for many who know about emo genre, as the New Jersey band became one of many shelters for many outcasts to loathe about how miserable their lives are during their 13 years run. For some serious listeners and critics, they would be mind-boggled about this kind of genre, as they think these songs are simply hardcore-punk-goes-pop tracks with melodramatic lyrics simply moaning about death, misanthropy, self-harm, or, worse, how f***ed up the lyricists were, and believed they were simply popular because they are relatable and digestible. Despite such criticisms, that didn’t stop these albums to sell very well, as many have gone gold or platinum or even multi-platinum, some of these later have turned landmarks in music, at least in the world of Emo music. Today, in order to commemorate the three weeks away from the final cross-country Vans Warped Tour, I decided to take an exploration inside one of Emo’s landmark albums—MCR’s triple-platinum major-label debut, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. (As much as I would love to review the follow-up, The Black Parade, I think the sophomore effort is a more of a solidly legendary album in the emo genre.)
To begin with, the opening track, “Helena (So Long & Goodnight)” is a thrashing goth-rock ballad inspired from the death of the grandmother of frontman Gerard Way and his brother/ band’s bassist Mikey. Despite the fusion of mourning ballad and quick-paced rock riffs is a bit icky and jarring at times, it’s still very visceral in general. With lyrics about the funeral of the women (“Long ago/ Just like the hearse you die to get in again/ We are so far from you/ Burning on/ Just like the match you strike to incinerate"), hoping to reunite with her (the bridge "Can you hear me?/ Are you near me?/ Can we pretend to leave and then/ We'll meet again/ When both our cars collide") and regrets of not staying with her (the chorus "What's the worst that I can say?/ Things are better if I stay/ So long and goodnight/ So long not goodnight"), it serves as what a great album should have—a brilliant opening track. Even though it is melodramatic when it comes to lyrics and vocal delivery, with the titanic yet catchy guitar riffs, it surprisingly does a good job capturing the sadness of losing your beloved one, especially the ones you didn't stay with and cared about, just like the case of elder Way, when he sank into drug and alcohol addiction and relentless touring instead of caring about his grandmother, and it does a good job for setting the gothic tone for the album.
The high energy, face-paced following track, "Give 'Em Hell, Kid", which opens the conceptual theme of the album, told in the perspective of the lover, who is unaware of her dear loved one's actions and whereabouts, in which she moans about whether they will ever met together ("This is how we like to do it in the murder scene/ Can we settle up the score?"), misses him greatly ("If you were here I'd never have a fear/ So go on live your life/ But I miss you more than I did yesterday"), gets his attention ("Well, don't I look pretty walking down the street/ In the best damn dress I own?") and asks him whether is this the way he wanted by separating from her. ("Your dreams and your hopeless hair (oh whoa ow!)/ We never wanted it to be this way for all our lives/ Do you care (at all)?") This song may sound silly for some, but it portrays the difficulties of lovers who undergo long-distance relationship in a devastating accuracy, all in the while continues the morbidly gothic theme; "To The End" is a beginning of the man's killing by crashing into a wedding party, in which he kills the groom and his friends ("He calls the mansion, not a house, but a tomb/ He's always choking from the stench and the fume/ The wedding party all collapsed in the room/ So send my resignation to the bride and the groom" and "Down by the pool, he doesn't have many friends, as they are/ Face down and bloated, snap a shot with the lens"), as the groom betrays his loved one by hooking up with other men, ("He's not around, he's always looking at men" and the chorus "(So, say goodbye) To the vows you take/ (And say goodbye) To the life you make/ (And say goodbye) To the heart you break/ And all the cyanide you drank/ (And say goodbye) To the last parade/ (And walk away) From the choice you made/ (And say goodnight) To the heart you break/ And all the cyanide you drank") and she loves him dearly ("If you marry me, would you bury me❓/ Would you carry me to the end❓”) Even though it sounds as a stretch for continuing the theme, as it sounds more like portraying the wife kills her husband than the man crash the party and kills everyone there, it still draws perfectly about the anger of being betrayed in life and the instrumentals, especially the solo riffs between the second and third chorus, are excellent to match the sorrow-drenched revenging lyrics and ready for the audiences to ring up and create a mosh pit.
Then, things get even much more morbid and frightening in the screamo-tingled "You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison", which features Bert McCracken of the Utah band
The Used, a friend of the band. This is one of very few songs that is restricted for the concept, in which the protagonist got caught and sent to prison despite he thought he will never get caught ("In the middle of a gun fight/ In the center of a restaurant/ They say, 'Come with your arms, raised high'/ Well, they're never gonna get me/Like a bullet through a flock of doves/ To wage this war/ Against your faith in me"), falling in love with an inmate (the chorus "Now, but I can't and I don't know/ How we're just two men as God had made us/ Well, I can't, well, I can!/ Too much, too late/ Or just not enough of this/ Pain in my heart for your dying wish/ I'll kiss your lips, again"), being raped in the prison ("They make me do push-ups in drag/ But nobody cares if you're losing yourself/ Am I losing myself?"), moaning about suicidal thoughts. ("Well, I miss my mom, will they give me the chair?/ Or lethal injection, or swing from a rope, if you dare?/ Nobody knows all the trouble I've seen") The song also perhaps delivers one of the most jaw-dropping bridge ever made, in which Way sang, "To your room, what they ask of you/ Will make you want to say, 'So long'/ Well, I don't remember, why remember you?", further showing the protagonist laments about freeing himself by killing himself, then the switched to McCracken's turn, in which he screamed "Do you have the keys to the hotel❓/'Cause I'm gonna string this motherf***er on fire!/ Fire!", which shows the protagonist has a split personality to burn the prison down in order to release himself from the prison, relief himself from the haunted experience and, of course, racking up the number of his killing number to finish the deal, and in the end, he did, evident in the repeating “now, now, now”. It's definitely one of the more memorable tracks in the album, and it’s not just because of its lengthy title and the brilliant instrumentations.
After the horrifying cut, MCR then veered away from the concept to moaning about school life in "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)", in which narrator of the song tries to help his female friend who doesn't listen to his real deeper problem. In the song, he hopes her to tell her problems to him ("Well if you wanted honesty/ That's all you had to say"), forget the dramas ("For all the dirty looks/ The photographs your boyfriend took/ Remember when you broke your foot/ From jumping out the second floor❓”), realise high school life is not everything (“What will it take to show you/ That it's not the life it seems❓”), hope she understand the lyrics she sang (“I've told you time and time again/ You sing the words but don't know what it means”) and, most importantly, understand his troubles. (“I held you close as we both shook/ For the last time, take a good hard look” and “You said you read me like a book/ But the pages all are torn and frayed”) Thanks to its relatively more joyous instrumentations and light-hearted and more relatable lyrics, it’s easily the funnest and one of the best song in the album, especially for those who had hard times at school. No wonder Rolling Stone Magazine praised “I’m Not Okay” as one of the standout tracks in the album, despite giving the album a mediocre review.
Next, MCR moved back to the concept in the cinematic “The Ghost of You”, in which the protagonist started to miss his lover (“I never said I'd lie and wait forever/ If I died, we'd be together/ I can't always just forget her/ But she could try”) and frustrate that he will never complete the deal (“At the end of the world or the last thing I see/ You are, never coming home, never coming home/ Could I❓ Should I❓”), which set the path of the “Interlude”, where he prays the angels to protect the lover (“Saints protect her now”). This track actually is another standout track in the album, as it gave the album more depth by exhibiting the band’s vulnerability, while showing that the band got a knack for The Cure-like gothic yet poppy hooks, with the grander guitar riffs. In the end, Gerard Way stopped when he was about to complete the line “For all the ghosts that are never gonna catch me” and did not finish the words “catch me”, giving listeners (for me, at least) some haunts about the overall gothic melancholy in the album.
MCR then moved away from the concept for serious themes in “The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You” and “Thank You For The Venom”, the former of which discusses Gerard Way himself facing a dark life of abusing cocaine and alcohol (“Lost in the prescription/ She's got something else in mind/ Check into the Hotel Bella Muerte”) and hoping to get away from the dependency yet he is too weak to fight against it (“Alright, give up, get down/ It's just the hardest part of living/ Alright, she wants it all/ To come down, this time”), which did the job like “The Ghost of You” to add more depth to the album; the fan-favourite latter is a harsh critique of the brainwashing from the media and the public, in which Gerard Way begins with the line "Sister, I'm not much a poet, but a criminal/ And you never had a chance/ Love it, or leave it, you can't understand/ A pretty face, but you do so carry on/ And on, and on, and on”, which is perhaps confronting that the “sister” has no chance to convert him to a Catholic, and claimed that he is just the way that the “doctor” made him and he (and his band) wouldn’t front the scene if the “sister” paid him, while saying he’s no interest in the ideals and only want to be himself, (“Preach all you want but who's going to save me/ I keep a gun on the book you gave me, hallelujah, lock and load/ Black is the kiss, the touch of the serpent son/ It ain't the mark or the scar that makes you one”) while welcoming the criticisms in the chorus. These two tracks may sound the same as both has the similar gothic, metallic riffs and even heavy-handed in terms of production, but look deeper to the words, and you will find Gerard Way is actually capable of writing introspective lyrics (“The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You”) and even able to give venomous kiss-offs (“Thank You For The Venom”, which is one of my favourite tracks in the album).
The two following tracks, the another concert-favourite “Hang ‘Em High” and “It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a F***ing Deathwish”, also follows the same pattern of thrashing riffs and darkly melodies, yet it still showcases the diversity of the album in terms of material: the Western-inspired former(evident in “Wait until it fades to black/ Ride into the sunset”) showcases the cowboy is not going to surrender to his enemies, which is a metaphor for not succumbing to modern stereotypes, shown in the chorus “But don't stop if I fall/ And don't look back/ Oh, baby, don't stop/ Bury me/ And fade to black”, while keeping the song fun with the repeating line “She won't stop me, put it down/ She won't stop me, put it down/ She won't stop me, put it down/ So get your gun and meet me by the door” and ends the repetition with a scream; “It’s Not a Fashion Statement,…” resumes the concept of the album, where the protagonist starts to confronts the devil about destroying his life (“The damage you've inflicted, temporary wounds/ I’m coming back from the dead and I'll take you home with me/ I’m taking back the life you stole”) and questioning the devil’s loyalty to the deal (“Hip-hip-hooray for me, you talk to me/ But would you kill me in my sleep❓”) while starting to take revenge on the devil (“This hole you put me in wasn't deep enough/ And I'm climbing out, right now/ You're running out of places to hide from me”) as he starts to realise the deal is somehow nothing, as Gerard Way moans at the perspective of the protagonist to the lover, “When you go/ Just know that I will remember you/ If living was the hardest part/ We'll then, one day, be together/ And in the end, we'll fall apart/ Just like the leaves change in colours“. These two tracks actually emphasises one of the themes of the album: revenge, and they really flourished it into a sweet one, like the album title suggests.
The two final tracks, “Cemetery Drive” and “I Never Told You What I Do for a Living”, draw the bittersweet end of the story, as the lover of the protagonist committed suicide (“And they found you on the bathroom floor”) yet he refuses to accept it (“I miss you, I miss you, so far/ And the collision of your kiss/ That made it so hard”) in the former track, while the latter track shows the protagonist committed suicide as well in order to complete his deal with the devil (“And we'll all dance along/ To the tune of your death/ We'll love again, we'll laugh again
And it's better off, this way”), and told to his dead lover that he had such massacre is not because of money or fame, but to reunite with her(“It ain't the money and it sure as hell ain't just for the fame/ It's for the bodies I claim and those” and the chorus “Only go so far 'til you bury them
So deep and down, we go”), he was stained with unforgivable sins (“A stain that never comes off the sheets/ Clean me off, I'm so dirty, babe/ The kind of dirty where the water never cleans off the clothes”), and, eventually, they could be together again, even in death.(“And never again, and never again/ They gave us two shots to the back of the head/ And we're all dead, now”) The two tracks really sum up something about a dark side of life: we worked so hard in order to reach our dreams, yet we might end up nothing but death, which really emphasise the nihilistic feature of the Emo genre.
To sum up, this album is a flawed yet brilliant one, as the tracks can be redundant in terms of sound, lyrics can be silly at times and Way’s vocals can be over-the-top at times, as well as the production is actually a bit heavy-handed and even too much and the theme of the album is very messy and can be confounding at times, but like Alternative Press agreed that it's not the singles make the album great when first reviewing this album, the albums' overall gothic and thrashing sound actually flourish it as a uniformly dark and adrenaline-driving artefact and the melodramatic, moaning lyrics and vocal delivery enhances the catharsis of the album.For many listeners, they will be attracted to this album easily because of its catchy, digestible hooks and highly relatable lyrics. Sure, some may get bored, if not appalled, because of redundantly dark, thrashing melodies in the album (which explains why the band goes more experimental with more genre-bending in their following studio albums, 2006’s The Black Parade and 2010’s Danger Days), the over-the-top yet rather shallow lyrics and the unorganised and incomprehensible conceptual themes in the album(which again explain why the band pushed themselves for tighter and clearer concepts in the following recordings), but when you try to look the album at the greater picture, you will understand why many MCR have created such a loyal fanbase and a legacy that opens a new Way for the future alt-rockers to unleash their emotions, even years after they disbanded in 2013.
Recommended Tracks:
Helena (So Long & Goodnight)
You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison
The Ghost of You
I’m Not Okay (I Promise)
Thank You For The Venom
