my chemical romance
i brought you my bullets, you brought me your love
'Ever wonder what a cross between Guns N? Roses, At the Drive-In, and an overdose of Scorsese movies would produce?
Whatever it sounds like, My Chemical Romance?s healthy dose of screaming vocals, religious and mafia references, and New Jersey attitudes cannot be to far off from the answer.
Gerard Way may not be the most intellectual of lyricists (?Can you take this spike. Will it wash away this jet black feeling.?) and bassist Mikey Way may have broken the first commandment of rock by wearing his own band?s t-shirt in concert but these things can be overlooked. So can obsessively over-recurring themes of death, bullets, ?the patron saint of switchblade fights.?
Seriously, Gerard, you might want to go see a psychiatrist.
It is easy to look passed these things because, plain and simple; My Chemical Romance rocks harder than any new band has in years. To go out on a limb here, they may be the next ATDI. The afros are probably incidental, though.
The typical drum/bass/guitar instrumentation has a sense of purpose behind it, in addition to the enormous amount of energy put out in both the harder and softer parts.
His screams sound more like a pissed-off shrieking rant than melodically structured bawls at times, but Gerard?s voice has a very endearing quality about him. It fits well into his pretty-boy, leather-jacket-clad persona and brings the sounds of MCR to a much higher and more reputable level.
?I Brought You My Bullets may have you thinking of a younger Ray Liota confessing, ?As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be in the mafia.? It gives the record a concept album feel: the music Frank Sinatra may have made if he was alive and in a punk band today.
Although the angle is barely noticeable, the songs on the album progress downward in a fairly linear fashion. The last songs are not all that much worse than the first, but the first half of the album is, without a doubt, stronger than the second.
?Honey, This Mirror Isn?t Big Enough for the Two of Us,? ?Vampires Will Never Hurt You,? and ?Headfirst for Halos,? the mandatory east coast song against suicide, are the best tracks on the album.
The strongest points of MCR are the constants that run through every song: the band?s character, attitude, stage presence in concert, and their virility.