Review: My Chemical Romance's Danger Days

My Chemical Romance has a brand new album with a stupid name: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. A departure from their established, dark style of their earlier work, Danger Days represents a change of direction and style for the band, reportedly sparked by the departure of, and replacement of, their drummer Bob Bryar for reasons unknown to the public at large.

While not necessarily a full-out concept album, Danger Days definitely has a consistent theme, and as far as it matters, a character and a setting. The best way I can describe the album’s theme is that it’s directly evocative of the small-town let’s-get-out-of-here themes and circumstances of so many characters in so many stories. Images of highways, deserts, discontented small-town Midwestern youths absolutely fill every single square inch of the lyrics. Every track either directly contains the words ‘run away’, ‘this town’, or some very direct allusions toward the narrator’s discontent of his situation, his presumption that life is better somewhere else, and his desire to bring his girlfriend on the journey with him.

The only real character is a fictional radio DJ named DJ Dr. Death Defying, whose radio program is supposedly the length of this album. Dr. D.D. occasionally interrupts the succession of songs to take the role of a caretaker of sorts, and seems to think that the youth of the world are at war with the generation which begot them, and champions the ‘Fabulous Killjoys’ in their battle against the adults/their parents/the cops. Also interesting to note is that his presence in this album was immediately reminiscent of DJ Dr. K, who, in the videogame Jet Grind Radio played the exact same role in almost the exact same setting.

So why have I just spent three hundred words without even mentioning the music? Because these themes of discontent and escape really really hit you over the head right away. I’ll get to the other half of the album now.

Musically, the record is far more interesting than its lyrical or contextual/conceptual counterpart. These guys have become very talented songwriters in all aspects. Several styles of music are explored in the album, from club-thumping techno (Planetary GO!), puke-in-your-lap punk rock (Party Poison), ass-shattering confrontational rock (Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back), and flowing, beautiful singalong tracks that beg to be danced to (Bulletproof Heart, SING, and Summertime).

In nearly every track you will find a finely written vocal melody, that is almost always wonderfully sung by teenybopper lust-magnet Gerard Way. Occasionally he will maul his vowel sounds to make a few lines rhyme, like the chorus of Bulletproof, rhyming ‘gravity’ with ‘me’, but pronouncing them ‘gravitay’, and ‘may’. The melody serves as an excellent counterpoint to the rest of the band, and in Bulletproof, Save Yourself, SING, and Summertime, I found myself looping the song several times over, just to hear the subtle intricacies in all of the instruments, and how they’ll all come together from different sides of the dominant chord into one of the most pleasing resolutions I’ve heard in a pop song in a long time.

Please do not let my disparagement of the lyrics and imagery turn you off from this record. The lyrics are pretty stupid at times, and so is the title, and the album art style, and pretty much everything that isn’t the music. But those aren’t the important aspects anyway, so it won’t detract from the listening experience unless you’re really trying to analyze the record, like I am. Danger Days is a fabulously written work of music from a group of musicians who have truly found a good vehicle and style for their self-expression. Give it a listen, you won’t be disappointed.