My Chemical Romance

My Chemical Romance came roaring out of Newark, New Jersey, in September 2001: Gerard Way on vocals, Mikey Way on bass, Ray Toro on guitar and Matt Pelissier on drums, with Frank Iero joining on rhythm guitar in 2002. They cut their debut, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, for Eyeball Records in 2002, all ragged post-hardcore screams and melodramatic hooks, and it was clear straight away that this band had more theatre in its bones than the average basement act.

Reprise signed them the following year, and Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge arrived in 2004, trading the rough edges for big, gleaming guitar hooks, Toro's solos slicing through and Gerard Way's yelp swinging between gallows humour and real heartbreak. Bob Bryar replaced Pelissier on drums not long after it came out, and the record kept on selling until it went platinum more than a year later. "Helena", "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" and "The Ghost of You" carried the load, even as the band told anyone who would listen that they were not an emo band.

Then came The Black Parade in 2006, a full-blown rock opera and concept album with a marching band's swagger and a stadium's lungs, and its lead single "Welcome to the Black Parade" went all the way to number one in the UK. It turned a devoted following into a standing army, and a hostile run of stories in the Daily Mail only stirred up more controversy. "Famous Last Words" and "Teenagers" kept the drums beating.

Bryar was gone before Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys arrived in 2010, a brighter, neon-lit left turn, and James Dewees came in on keyboards for the road in 2012. They put out the Conventional Weapons singles, left over from 2009 sessions, across 2012 and 2013, then announced the end on March 22, 2013, with the greatest-hits set May Death Never Stop You following in 2014. The silence lasted until October 2019, when they announced a reunion show for that December; the Reunion Tour ran from 2022 into early 2023, and "The Foundations of Decay", out in May 2022, was their first new music in 8 years. On rock radio's countdowns, the parade still forms up behind "Welcome to the Black Parade".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.