Review Summary: My Chemical Romance perfectly blend the mixture of punk and electronica. Killers, take notice.
I have been a little harsh regarding electronic music involving synths such as The Killers' first debut, Hot Fuss, as well as Radiohead's fan favorite Kid A. That's not to say that rock music and synths can't go together though, they just need the right mixture, and quite frankly, Danger Days has the formula down perfectly. After the success of Black Parade a few years back, what was MCR to do? They couldn't get any more anthem-filled or they would fall by the wayside like Green Day and their newest release. So they decided to take a new direction entirely and it couldn't have worked better. Combining some old school punk like their Bullets and Revenge days with an until now unexplored keyboard, MCR hit a home run. And the concept for the album is fantastic.
The concept of Danger Days revolves around a fictitious apocalypse and MCR plays a bunch of revolutionaries trying to take down an Empire-like enemy that threatens the world. Think Star Wars meets Mad Max and there you go. Its a great concept and it really makes the music videos a lot of fun to watch. But as for the actual music, it's even better. Lead vocalist Gerard Way writes about his normal themes of love, loss and being a punk, and he's full of energy just like their predeceasing outputs. However where the band has changed the most is in the instrumental department. While some of the songs still have that old fashioned punk rock goodness to them, the newest inclusion here is the inclusion of keyboards. They are almost always well implemented and usually don't become the main focus of the song. Although if I did have a complaint its that they're a bit too prevalent in a couple of the early tracks.
The album is split into two halves after the funky intro Na Na Na (and more nas). The first half of the album is full of electronic dance-punk like Sing and Planetary Go! while the second half has more traditional MCR like Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back and The Kids of Yesterday. Then the album ends with a very standard but very old-school punk song Vampire Money. Personally I do like the second half better although the main reason for that is that the first half contains most of the singles that have been drilled into my head already. Overall its a great album though and probably the best possible direction the band could have gone after Black Parade.
