Revival of the love affair

NOT SINCE gangsta rap’s heyday had mere musicians whipped the moral majority into such a lather. It was summer 2008 and ‘emo’ rockers My Chemical Romance were coming under uncomfortable scrutiny over their bleak, baroque concept album, The Black Parade.

Seizing on the record’s dark lyrics, British tabloids were linking the band to the suicide of 13-year-old Londoner Hannah Bond. One newspaper went so far as to accuse the Americans of presiding over a “suicide cult”.

Of course, anyone who took the time to actually listen to songs such as This Is How I Disappear and I’m Not Okay could have told you this was nonsense. Far from encouraging kids to wallow in despair, My Chemical Romance were reaching out, letting fans know that, no matter how bad things seemed, they weren’t alone. They weren’t trying to hurt people. They were trying to save them.

“As individuals we have been through a lot and so have our fans,” says guitarist Frank Iero, contemplating the Black Parade furore. “We want to create a place where people would feel accepted for who they are. Where they don’t have to put up with all the bullshit and ridicule that is often part of life. That’s basically our mission.”

It wasn’t just in Britain that MCR were in danger of becoming persona non grata. In Mexico, fans — known as emos — came under violent attack. &

“It’s terrible to hear that stuff,” reflects Iero. “You don’t want anyone to be hurt, anywhere in the world. As far as feeling a responsibility, they didn’t get beat up because of us. They got beat up because people are hateful and ignorant. It’s a terrible thing. I don’t think we are any more responsible for that than for a war going on though. We had nothing to do with it.”

For all their protestations of innocence, the controversy left My Chemical Romance bruised and disillusioned. The Black Parade had been a career transforming smash, shifting more than two million copies in an era of plummeting record sales. But to be accused of seeking to corrupt the young, when they had set out to do exactly the opposite, wounded them deeply. When the band decided to go on hiatus it was an open question whether they’d get back together again.

Three years on, things have panned out in a way nobody could have predicted. My Chemical Romance return a group reborn. Gone are the mascara pouts, the black-on-black Edward Scissorhands costumes, downcast songs. With new album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, the group re-imagine themselves as latter day Ziggy Stardusts. Loosely conceptual, the LP is set in a post-apocalyptic future where motorcycle gangs roam the American interior and everyone dresses like an extra from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It is, quite literally, a thrill ride.

“Were we reacting to the Black Parade? I think our reaction to that was the time we took off,” says Iero. “If this new album is a response to anything it is to the fact that after that last record we were so beat we physically were not able to create any more.”

The origins of My Chemical Romance can be traced back to September 11, 2001. A comic book geek from small-town New Jersey, Gerard Way was left profoundly shaken by the 9/11 attacks. He lost his faith in humanity. So raw was the hurt he started a rock band to channel his angst. Roping in school friend Iero and younger brother Mikey, the group began to play around greater New York, touting a ragged mix of escapist lyrics and full-frontal guitars.

Fearlessly flamboyant and dizzy with hooks, their music dovetailed perfectly with the then emergent emo sub-culture. By the time their first album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love appeared in late 2002 they were already a well established cult act. With 2004’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge they stepped up a level, as Way’s song-writing grew more expansive and their intense lyrics reached an international fan-base of teen listeners. Soon they were the biggest band in the world nobody over age 18 had ever heard of.

Though it is a joyous affair, the new album was born of fraught circumstances. Last year, the group actually junked an entire LP worth of songs, recorded with Pearl Jam producer Brendan O’Brien. The idea had been to make a ‘grown up’ rock album, stripped of their trademark melodrama. Way struggled to reconcile himself to the idea. With completion date nearing, he called a halt.

“He had this overwhelming sense he wasn’t saying what he wanted to say,” explains Iero.

One of the most straight-up fun albums you’ll hear this year, Danger Days has achieved what previously might have seemed impossible. It has made My Chemical Romance credible. Circa The Black Parade the band were seen as strictly the preserve of troubled teens. They spoke to their audience with a directness that nobody else could manage. And yet if you didn’t belong to that audience, it was hard to take their music seriously. Channelling a love for Queen, Bowie and even Lady GaGa, the new record is radically different proposition, a day-glo sci-fi odyssey which makes other stadium rock bands feel like lumbering dinosaurs by comparison.

“Theatricality is a dying art these days,” says Iero. “There aren’t a lot of artists — there are musical performers. Some of them have talent. Some of them straight out don’t. There is a lack of art and a lack of ambition. And when you put something two dimensional together, it shows. The public doesn’t always see through that. But I think some people do. They want to see true art. And we’re glad they’re out there for us.”

* Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys is out now.