Album Review: My Chemical Romance Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

My Chemical Romance - <i>Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys</i> album cover. Photo / Supplied

Rating: 5/5
Verdict: Enough skulking, let's party

So, with the song SING, My Chemical Romance have managed to come up with something that has smouldering and sinister Tool-like mutterings, before giving way to a flamboyant jazz hands-style show tune from Glee, and then somehow turning it into a sonic squall of sloganeering and guitar solos. All in one big, bold, pop rock song.

Welcome to the grand musical world of MCR where Queen and T. Rex meet head-on with melodic hardcore, frenzied pop punk and metal.

As a reaction to the conceptual approach of previous album, The Black Parade - about a cancer sufferer called The Patient - the New Jersey band planned to make an ordinary rock album this time round. But then they changed their mind. However, even though Danger Days has a concept, based around a gang of futuristic renegades called the Fabulous Killjoys, the songs are more direct and the album a more constant and accessible ride than The Black Parade.

The mastery of the album is how it shifts from sweeping and grandiose to slamming and unbridled - often within one song, although the dynamic is most effective between tracks. For example, it moves from the lurching serenade of S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W, into the late 80s Cure-meets-new romantic pop of Summertime, and then on to the temperamental and shouty groovecore of Destroya, which recalls raging and intense Minor Threat or Refused.

It's also fun rather than having that sulky bottom lip glumness of previous albums. Party Poison kicks and vents with effortless house-wrecking abandon, Planetary (Go!) has that shouty, dance-party pop rock oonst and bounce akin to our own Kids of 88, and once again band leader Gerard Way shows he's capable of heartfelt - if a little overwrought - sweetness on beautiful power ballad The Only Hope For Me Is You.

In the words of pirate radio DJ Doctor Death Defying, Danger Days is "louder than God's revolver and twice as shiny". Get into it, and get hooked.

-TimeOut