You know when you hear a song on the radio, or see its video on FUSE, (or MTV, for you ADD mainstreamers) and you have no idea who the band is behind it? You know nothing about them or their history. You don’t even know if this is their first outing or if they’ve had any other albums. All you know is that you have an intense dislike towards them, and you don’t even know why. That’s how I felt when I first saw FUSE play I’m Not Okay on one of their late-night strings of rock videos. Maybe it was the late hour and my weighty eyelids that were egging me on to despise them. Maybe it was the fact that their video featured little vignettes of the group members in a school setting, equipped with Catholic school formalwear. Whatever it was, I didn’t like them, and quite frankly, I didn’t care why.
Now, even though I wasn’t the punk rock fan that I am today, I still had a soft spot for a certain band by the name of Green Day. (Maybe you’ve heard of them?) So I went out and purchased their magnum-opus known as American Idiot and became addicted to it along with half of America (apparently, the other half were the idiots…tehehe). So, when I heard that Green Day were coming to Iowa for a concert I got together with my friends and decided we should all skip school to see the show. We were obsessed with them at that point, and a couple of my friends were even more excited about the band that was opening for them. Apparently it was some goth-punk band called My Chemical Romance. “Who are they?” I asked my girlfriend.
So while we were driving to Dairy Queen to get a mid-school snack, she had me listen to their sophomore album, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. While I certainly didn’t think it was the life-altering disc that she had built it up to be, I didn’t have anything bad to say about it. And then I heard a familiar guitar intro come through the speakers. “I’ve heard this somewhere before.” It was then that I realized I had been listening to the very band who I had previously loathed. She insisted on me giving it a fair listen all the way through, so she burned me a copy of it (because there was no way I was going to pay money for it). I’ll admit it: I was skeptical. But I decided to put my skepticism aside, because I was going to see them in concert and I at least wanted to be familiar with some of their songs. I listened, and in all honesty, I didn’t like all of the songs I heard…but I liked a handful. It was enough to get me a bit eager to see them perform live. So when the big show day came we all trekked to Cedar Rapids in a rickety van. I was so excited that I’m positive if we had hit any big bumps I would have wet myself. Basically, the show was awesome, as was to be expected of a Green Day concert. But I was pleasantly surprised by My Chemical Romance. Even though their set list was short, they had sheer energy that not even GD could match. It was after the concert that I officially became a fan.
After repeated listens of the album, I’ve come to appreciate the diverse sounds that it contains. Even though Three Cheers is essentially a concept album, much like American Idiot, each song has its own identity. I was impressed with the linear storytelling that let you poke your head in and look around at the crazy world MCR created. The tale that is woven is done so around a couple and their toils through life, love, and death in a comic book-like fashion. Think of Bonnie & Clyde meets Kill Bill, with a touch of the old west.
As with almost any album, Three Cheers has its ups and downs, as well as its in betweens. Luckily, there are more ups than there are downs. Let me start by saying that they picked the right song to lead off the disc. Helena shows the adrenaline rush that the band can create using nothing more than pure emotion. There are no fancy guitar tricks (unless you consider tremolo picking a trick) and no vocal effects. What you hear is what you get. And what you get is a truly awesome opening. This is one of the few songs that isn’t part of the overall story, so it’s apt that it is at the beginning instead of being spliced somewhere in the middle. Helena was written (and most likely named) after the loss of Gerard’s grandmother, who was very close to him.
Following the trend of Helena, it seems that the band is at their best when they are wailing to their hearts content, but simultaneously keeping it melodic. Some examples of this are To the End, I Never Told You What I Do for a Living, and It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a Deathwish. All of them have a certain distinction, so that if you listened to them back to back, they wouldn’t begin to bleed into each other. Simplicity without similarity. To the End starts with a sharp, almost shrieking, guitar riff that blends effortlessly into the chorus, where Gerard cries “Would you marry me/Would you bury me/Would you carry me to the end?” It’s a desperate plea for someone who will stay true to their wedding vows and take the words “until death do us part” seriously. I also like the little “whoa-oh’s” that chime along with the crack of the drums before the second verse. I Never Told You balances the hammering riffs of the verses with tiny twinges of the strings during the post-chorus, sounding a lot like Alien Ant Farm (I don’t know why I made that connection, I just did…so leave me alone). It’s Not a Fashion Statement starts out with your run-of-the-mill screaming, but then kicks the amps in the balls and cranks it up to 11. Great guitar work here.
The standout track of this album is You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us in Prison. If you’re looking for an example of what I meant by wailing melodically, this is the song you’ll want to listen to. Go ahead and put yourself in the boots of John Wayne, because this song is basically an old west drama, complete with lyrics of gunfights and cellmates who cheat at checkers. One thing that amazes me about MCR is the fact that about half of what Gerard does is screech into the microphone, but on songs like this, it adds to the wall of sound, rather than detract from it. I adore the guitar intro, which immediately puts me amidst an old-west shootout.
Not all of the songs deserve a hip, hip, hooray though. There are a handful that will get their cheers sans hooray. It’s not that they’re bad; it’s just that they’re nothing spectacular. Take for instance, their lead single I’m Not Okay. Admittedly, I have had a few prejudices against this song since I first saw its whorishly overplayed video on FUSE. But after expanding my narrow mind, I have bumped this song’s status from train wreck to pedestrian. I will say that the more I hear it, the more it grows on me. In fact, I actually get somewhat energized when I hear it now. Ghost of You goes the exact opposite direction, as would be expected of a down-tempo ballad. It does showcase, for perhaps the first time, how good of an actual singing voice Gerard has, which is something that is tremendously overshadowed on the rest of the disc.
For those of you with short attention spans, you’ll probably find yourselves drifting off during most of tracks 7 though 9, as these are the downs of the disc that I spoke of earlier. The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You is far too plodding to ever gain enough momentum to make me care about skipping it. A short, throwaway Interlude follows, leading right into Thank You For the Venom. No, MCR, thank YOU for providing me with a headache. This song is just plain repetitive. The chorus is decent, and is probably the song’s only redemption. Other than that, it just seems to go on... and on... and on... and on again...
But thankfully, there are two other tracks on this disc to brighten the day. One of them comes directly after the snooze-inducing repertoire of tracks 7-9. Hang Em’ High goes straight for your jugular and keeps its iron-fisted kung-fu grip on it until its final moments. What can I describe the intro as? Well…a mess. But it’s so chaotic that you don’t even really care about the notes, you are just sort of enthralled by it. The whole song takes the Wild West theme to new heights, with some interesting lyrics about “six-shooters” and “wild-eyed jokers”. Another song worth a few listens is Cemetery Drive. It’s far from ground-breaking, but it doesn’t have to be. With the exception of I’m Not Okay this has the catchiest chorus on the album. It’s delivered with so much emotion that you can truly feel his lament coming through your speakers. I think it would have been wise to put this as the last track on the disc. But hey, it wasn’t my CD to make, was it?
All in all, when the dust has settled and the smoke has drifted from the barrels, this makes for a pretty darn good listen. If you aren’t a fan of them, I would still suggest picking Three Cheers up and giving it a FAIR listen, all the way through. If you go into it with your biases on your sleeves, then you may miss out on some worthy music.
My final rating: 4 stars and 2 ½ cheers.
