My Chemical Romance - I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love

If you're searching for a dose of party music or feel-good escapism, you won't find it on I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. Thus begins the descent into the maelstrom of “AfTeR dArK!” From the other side of midnight delving deep into the subconscious mind, TFGC is taking a drive through the long cold hours after dark. With the roof down, the sub punching out bass, music to wake the neighbours pours out across the suburbs of your town. Tail lights glinting and flickering in the darkness as you leave everything you know behind in a cloud of dust and stones…Open the pages of a lover’s fictional highs and lows escaping from the day, bursting into the night, eating drive through dinners and having sex under the stars on the backseat leatherette…

Lyrically, this debut album by My Chemical Romance is definitely on the dark side; lyrics like "The amount of pills I'm taking counteracts the booze I'm drinking" (from "Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough for the Two of Us") and "I think I'll love to die alone" (from "Cubicles") are typical of the New Jersey band's less than rosy outlook. But like so many angst-ridden alternative pop/rock and punk-pop artists who have emerged in the early 2000s, My Chemical Romance know how to be exuberant and introspective at the same time -- musically, they tend to be aggressive and hard rocking, but lyrically, they're all about introspection. And that combination certainly isn't unique; from Nirvana to blink-182 to Creed -- from post-grunge to emo -- plenty of alterna-rockers have demonstrated that a band can rock aggressively and be introspective at the same time. But if My Chemical Romance are less than ground breaking, they're good at what they do. Produced by Thursday's lead singer, Geoff Rickly, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love is a generally decent effort -- one that deals with a lot of negative emotions and does so in a very candid way. Some will find the lyrics depressing, but then, rock music isn't obligated to press the smile button 24 hours a day. Sadness, pessimism, anger, disillusionment -- none of which are difficult to find on this album -- are, like happiness, pleasure, and optimism, valid areas of rock expression. I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love falls short of exceptional, but it's a noteworthy, generally respectable debut for the New Jersey combo.

 

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Among third wave emo’s most commercially successful groups, My Chemical Romance emerged with a fury from New Jersey, the state itself being fertile ground for the post-hardcore and emo scenes, having birthed such major genre acts as Midtown, Thursday, and Senses Fail, as well as the lesser known but equally deserving Armor for Sleep and Hidden in Plain View. Though the Newark-founded rock outfit would not take mainstream music by storm until the release of 2004’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, its studio debut I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love made waves within its respective milieu, introducing My Chemical Romance to the disillusioned youth culture of a post-9/11 America. The album is by no means as strong as its successors, but boasts a number of crucial third wave emo gems, painting a portrait of a major youth movement soon to explode.

In terms of seminal genre releases, 2002 was to third wave emo what 1972 was to glam and 1992 was to grunge, with Taking Back Sunday, Coheed and Cambria, The Starting Line, Senses Fail (if one is willing to count an EP), and The Used all debuting alongside My Chemical Romance as central architects of their respective scene. Furthermore, established acts such as The Get Up Kids, Midtown, and Something Corporate also released significant albums that year. Something in My Chemical Romance’s synthesis of raw post-hardcore wrath and increasingly ambitious alt rock theatrics, however, destined the group for wider recognition than many of its peers. In its time, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love went a long way to define a large portion of its burgeoning movement, with much of its appeal owing to the group’s unique charismatic synergy. Of particular import is frontman Gerard Way, who remains the group’s soul, as he screams and wails his way through each of the album’s raging cuts. A disquieting listening experience, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love is morbidly melodramatic and undeniably brutal, though simultaneously accessible and appealing to the masses, having tapped into a distinct sense of 21st century adolescent angst.

Genre staples “Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us” and “Vampires Will Never Hurt You” remain ingrained within the fabric of emo culture, the former being among My Chemical Romance’s finest songs. Such tracks introduce Way’s unique vocal style, instantly reminding the listener that his eventual evolution from throat-blistering hardcore screamer to glamorous arena rock idol à la his hero Freddie Mercury is still astounding to trace. Elsewhere, “Drowning Lessons” and “Headfirst for Halos” place My Chemical Romance in competition with the likes of Thursday (whose frontman Geoff Rickly produced the album), the group’s jagged guitars and Way’s aggressive delivery keeping the listener on edge. “Skylines and Turnstiles,” another standout, reflects Way’s reaction to the events of the September 11th attacks, which he witnessed from several blocks away while interning at Cartoon Network in New York City. He later claimed this historic tragedy to have been the primary inspiration behind My Chemical Romance’s inception, which is fitting, as a great deal of third wave emo’s aesthetic and attitude can be attributed to the widespread sense of frenzied cultural trauma experienced in 9/11’s aftermath.

Ultimately, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love’s most important tracks arrive in the forms of slow burners “Early Sunsets Over Monroeville” and “Demolition Lovers.” The former, a deceptively enchanting reimagining of George A. Romero’s 1978-released zombie classic Dawn of the Dead, stands among emo’s all-time great anthems, Way delivering his most ferocious vocals on the entire album near the track’s conclusion. The latter, the album’s epic and central fan favorite, pays bleak homage to director Oliver Stone’s controversial 1994-released satirical crime film Natural Born Killers, and sets the stage for Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, whose narrative picks up where I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love’s leaves off. These tracks are especially intriguing in retrospect, as both indicate the grand cinematic aspirations of subsequent My Chemical Romance releases, specifically those of 2006’s The Black Parade and 2010’s Danger Days.

Relics of another world, what third wave emo releases have managed to hold up, (much of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, Infinity on High, Where You Want to Be, and Hidden in Plain View’s Life in Dreaming still sound pretty good), remain cultural time capsules, offering raw depictions of a now-distant era. I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love is a snapshot, faded in time, of a great local band soon to become a pop cultural phenomenon, launched from the streets of Newark onto the stage at Warped Tour and, later, the GRAMMY Museum. Though Way himself once derided the emo scene and his band’s corresponding label as “fucking garbage” and “bullshit” (his opinion appears to have softened with time), My Chemical Romance has arguably done more to define third wave emo than any other major act. I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love remains a testament to this point, its sense of youthful rage and suburban alienation eternally characteristic of the movement it helped to define.