WRITTEN BY AIDEN ORANTES
My Chemical Romance is one of, if not, the most influential pop punk and emo bands of the 21st century. With 4 albums currently under their belt, multiple tours with people such as Mindless Self Indulgence, Thursday, and Bon Jovi, it's no wonder that people were upset when they broke up in March of 2013, but they came back in 2019. In honor of their recently finished reunion tour, I decided to rank their current albums by my own criteria: Cinematic Universe (comic books, music videos, Twitter accounts), album sales (UK), outfits during each tour, and the cohesiveness of each album, as well as CD album designs. Ranked 4th is Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, which was released in 2004. It’s the least cohesive album because you can’t pick up the main theme of it, and it’s sort of all over the place. In the UK, it was 34th in the weekly charts, which is less than Bullets (the album in 3rd place), even though this was the album that got them major acclaim. Although the single “Thank You For The Venom” was good, it couldn’t do anything to bump up the abysmal score. Not even the CD design, which consisted of a drawing of the demolition lovers on the front, the pamphlet containing all 5 members of the band, as well as a rosary on the disc. Next, in third place, is I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, which came out in 2002. It barely has a story to speak of; it's considered an unofficial concept album, although fans do often connect it to Sweet Revenge. There’s more cohesiveness to this album than Sweet Revenge. Within the UK, it ranked 31st on the weekly charts, which was a higher ranking than the album after. It has my favorite single out of all of MCR’s discography, with “Vampires Will Never Hurt You”. Although the album CD art is a bit basic, with a man hanging by his ankles, and some text mentioning how Gerard will suck your blood out, if you pirate this album, it’s more experimental than the albums after it. In second place is Danger Days: The True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys, coming out in 2011. It has the best cinematic universe, with a set of comics, Twitter accounts for two of the characters, and music videos. In terms of cohesiveness, it's a little less cohesive than the next album on this list, since there are technically two timelines presented by the music videos and album. In the UK weekly charts, this album's highest place was 14th, which is pretty impressive, considering this is the last album before the breakup. For the tour, the outfits were a little basic, but when they did have outfits on stage, it looked decent. Out of all the singles for Danger Days, the best one was “SING", but not enough to dethrone “Vampires Will Never Hurt You.” The album's CD design is interesting, because it looks like an overplayed vinyl record, with the iconic spider on it. The pamphlet inside has multiple pictures of different characters from the album. In first place, there’s The Black Parade, released in 2006. In terms of cohesiveness, it tells the story of The Patient as he dies from cancer, and goes through meeting everyone in the Black Parade, from the Conductor to Fear and Regret. On tour, the band also ends up wearing their outfits representing the Black Parade, and even went as far as wearing skull makeup for some of their shows. For the cinematic universe, there isn’t as much as Danger Days, but there are videos to show the recording of the “Welcome to the Black Parade” video. In the UK weekly charts, it ended up ranking 1st place. The album's best single has to be “Famous Last Words”, because of the rawness of the vocals, the intensity of the video, and the fact that Gerard nearly broke his leg, and the drummer burned his leg from the fire in the background. The album’s CD has the rest of the cast of the Black Parade, including The Patient, Mother War, and many others in the case, while the disc has the band’s logo at the time. Comments are closed.
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