My Chemical Romance began their story in Newark, New Jersey in 2001, with vocalist Gerard Way, drummer Matt Pelissier, guitarist Ray Toro and bassist Mikey Way. Soon introducing another guitarist Frank Iero to their group after he finished working with his band Pencey Prep, and then after their first album getting a new drummer Bob Bryar. Deriving influences from The Smiths, Black Flag, Iron Maiden, Queen, Blur, and Pulp, My Chemical Romance creates music with alternative rock and pop punk influences, in turn helping create the “emo” scene.

Gerard Way, at the time perusing art at Cartoon Network, witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11^th, 2001, which changed the trajectory of his life. Gerard said in a Spin magazine interview “I literally said to myself ‘… I’ve gotta get out of the basement. I’ve got to see the world. I’ve got to make a difference.” After this realization, Gerard called Matt Pelissier on the matter of starting a band, and soon after both Ray Toro and Mikey Way were involved in the project.

‘Skylines and Turnstiles’ was the first song Gerard had written with the band My Chemical Romance. ‘Skylines and Turnstiles’ was directly about the attacks on 9/11, and as Ray Toro said in Life on the Murder Scene, “I guess the rest is history.” Their debut album, ‘I Brought You Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love’, featuring tracks including ‘Skylines and Turnstiles’, ‘Headfirst for Halos’ ‘Vampires Will Never Hurt You’ and ‘Demolition Lovers’, released on July 23^rd, 2002. The album suited Gerard’s love of dark themes, horror movies, comic books and revenge, the album’s raw and bold sound conveys stories of loss, tragedy and love all told with brilliant lyricism.

After doing shows locally and producing with Geoff Rickly from the band ‘Thursday’, they began going on tours with ‘Taking Back Sunday’ and ‘The Used’, building up their fanbase from the ground up, their manager put them on a tour in Europe soon after. The launch into success that ‘I Brought You Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love’ brought the band got them signed with ‘Eyeball Records’ later the next year, after they had initially resisted signing onto any label at all.

June 8^th, 2004, My Chemical Romance released their second album ‘Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge’, a beautifully executed concept album. ‘Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge’ centers around the band’s love of horror themes, which tells “The story of a man. A woman. And the corpses of a thousand evil men…” The cover of the album features the demolition lovers, art drawn by Gerard Way himself. Each track on the album is personal to Gerard in some way, even if a few don’t follow the exact storyline the album loosely tells. An example of this being the first track on the album ‘Helena’, which is about the loss of Gerard and Mikey’s grandmother.

Their album ‘Three Cheers for Sweet revenge’ featured four singles, ‘Helena’, ‘Thank You for the Venom’, ‘The Ghost of You’ and ‘I’m Not Okay (I Promise)’. Their single ‘I’m Not Okay’ took the newfound emo community by storm, with their new drummer Bob Bryar the band had several photo shoots done that covered magazines like ‘Kerrang!’ and ‘ALT Press’.

The hype from Three Cheers followed the band as they made their third album ‘The Black Parade’ in 2006, telling the story of a cancer patient and his relationship with his life and his inevitable death. ‘The Black Parade’ featured various singles, the two largest singles being ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ and ‘Teenagers’ which became the most popular songs the band had produced. The Black Parade’s consistent and beautiful aesthetic, paired with the incredible lyricism and theatrics of the album, created one hell of a tour for the band, consisting of 138 shows (not including festivals) worldwide. ‘The Black Parade Is Dead!’, a CD/DVD live album, released in 2007 to follow.

My Chemical Romance’s fourth and final album ‘Danger Days: The True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys’ in 2010, conveyed a more pop sound than the rest of their works. Danger Days was less popular than the other albums, however still performed well with hits like ‘Na Na Na’. The Danger Days album follows along with the story of the killjoys and their lives in post-apocalyptic California, 2019. Alongside the album, the story of Danger Days also is told through the form of comic books, the book having the same title.

My Chemical Romance split in 2013 on March 22^nd, partly due to the mental health struggles the members all experienced. Every member went on to do their own solo projects, Frank Iero being in several bands, Ray Toro making a solo album, and Gerard doing comics and solo music. Halloween 2019, the band had announced a reunion show on December 20^th, which with a tour announcement following soon after^,. After the COVID-19 postponement, the tour resumed, as the band released ‘The Foundations of Decay’ their first solo in years on May 12, 2022.

The release of ‘The Foundations of Decay’ and the professional recordings of several shows has lead many fans to speculate their being a fifth album coming out soon in the future. As the tenth anniversary of this legendary band’s split and the reunion tour coming to a close, who knows what’s in store for the future of My Chemical Romance.