Conventional Weapons

My Chemical Romance's most recent album, Danger Days: True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, was released on November 22, 2010. That was their first album since the stupidly successful The Black Parade, in 2006 - a pretty long gap, right? Part of that was because of the extensive touring they underwent because of TBP, and subsequent recuperation, but another part of that was writing an album that wasn't even Danger Days.

This album-that-never-was has never really been much of a secret with the band, as they've explained how it helped them create the songs that became Danger Days in various interviews. What we do know of this album is that it was an attempt to break from the band's previous traditions of costumes, themes and very meaningful songs (the thought of Gerard Way coming up with meaningless lyrics is actually laughable), and just make something dancy and light.
The thing was, it never went right. The band said the songs didn't sound right together, and they couldn't come up with an order to put them in for the album.
So they scrapped them and came up with Danger Days, which did have a similar, poppy sort of mood to it, but was still created with a theme and costumes and a whole concept behind it - Gerard Way (vocals - also co-creator of the comic series The Umbrella Academy) is currently creating a comic series based around the 2019 post-apocalyptic California the album's based in.

But it's not Danger Days I want to talk about here, it's Conventional Weapons. Back last autumn, rumours were surfacing that My Chemical Romance were back in the studio and working on a new album. Then they came out with the new logo, and everyone went mental. I remember sitting there myself, squealing for several days on internet forums and coming up with fantastical ideas about the content of the next album.
Then, on October 14th, Frank Iero made a post on the band's website (www.mychemicalromance.com) talking about the failed album that came before Danger Days. He said that they'd decided that, although they maybe didn't work as an album, some of the songs were too good to just forget about, and so they'd be releasing them, two at a time, once a month for five consecutive months.
Much fangirling was done. I don't think I've ever been so over-excited since my ex mentioned that he could play the bass part to Hysteria and I accidentally hit my head on the wall. I'd come into the MCR fandom (the MCRmy, if you're hardcore) in 2011, a few months after Danger Days had been released and the fuss had died down, so I'd never had the privilege of being excited for them working on new stuff - aside from their appearance on Yo Gabba Gabba - so this was all new for me. Actually, I was still pretty new to actually liking music properly, so it was equally strange.

Boy Division
Tomorrow's Money
Ambulance
Gun.
The World Is Ugly
The Light Behind Your Eyes
Kiss The Ring
Make Room!!!!
Surrender The Night
Burn Bright

Those are the tracks on each album, and above you will see a lovely display of their artwork (which I put together myself, thank you very much, because putting up the individual pictures sends the blog into a tantrum for some reason).
All of them are very distinctively My Chemical Romance, and they all sound similar to some of their other stuff, mainly The Black Parade and Danger Days - after all, a lot of this stuff is what helped form their newest album. Some of the stuff, I have to admit, doesn't sound quite right and you can tell why the band decided not to release them as an album, because it's not them at their best - although they're still a lot better than some other 'artists' trying their hardest (or rather, paying their songwriters to try their hardest). Plus, if you put all ten songs together and play them, there is a sort of cohesion there. I don't know, they just sound really nice if you play them all.
1, 3 and 5, I took to immediately and had on repeat on my iPod for ages - I spent most of my New Year's holiday in Berlin hopping about train stations to Conventional Weapons 1. 1 sounds like Danger Days to me, with the lyrics - "We got no heroes, 'cause our heroes are dead" -  and the sort of anarchic feel to it (I feel so cheesy saying that, I sound like a talking head off Channel 4), but still a bit different. There's a slight bit of TBP in there too.
2 took me a little while to get around to. I think it was because of the sort of Glee-style choir bit on the start of Ambulance. I was taken by surprise and a bit worried, so I didn't really go for it until I decided to try it again a week or so later, and I grew to love it. Gun's the easier to 'get' of the two on CW 2, but also a bit less exciting for that as well, although it is a lot more Danger Days-y as well, with the slightly paranoid lyrics ("The government wants your gun") and the sort of general feel of it. It sounds kind of like the song you'd use for a roadtrip scene in a film.
My favourite is definitely 3. I love it love it love it love it. Everyone in the bandom (fandom of a band = bandom, if you're not up on your internet slang or can't grasp the obvious) was getting quite worked up, because The World Is Ugly is not a new song. They did it before, years ago as a live performance only, and when asked about it said that the day they released it as an official record would be the day they stopped making music together. There's already been rumours going round - groundless, I'm sure - of strife within the band, so naturally that got everyone worried. However, it came out and they're still recording their new album, so all is well. It's a very big, dramatic sort of song, and reminds me a lot of The Black Parade, although at the very end there's a reference their first album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, with the lyrics "lost forever like ghosts in the snow, like ghosts in the sun" (see their song Vampires Will Never Hurt You). The Light Behind Your Eyes is more chilled out, and if possible even darker, but no less brilliant. It sounds very personal, like they're sending a message to someone - who, we don't know - an apology or something.
4 still kind of throws me off a bit. This is the one where I think they succeeded most with the light-hearted, meaningless kind of thing. Kiss The Ring is fast and a bit angry, and the kind of thing I'd jump about to or use to psyche myself up to get into a fight, but not get tattooed on my arm or anything. Make Room!!!! is my least favourite of the Conventional Weapons songs. I still like it a lot, but it just doesn't sound quite right. However, it does contain a spookier version of some of the lyrics in Na Na Na (first track on Danger Days) - "Everybody wants to change the world, but no-one, no-one wants to die" which I quite like, because I love a good reference.
5 is good. I don't think I've listened to it enough yet, but to me they have the same sort of feel as CW 3, with the darkness and the slightly melodramatic side. Surrender The Night's my favourite of the two, I think, because of the big shouty chorus (I am a fan of big shouty choruses, as you may find if you continue to read the blog), although it sounds more like Danger Days by night than TBP.

They're all definitely worth listening to, anyway, and if they don't hit you with their awesomeness straight away, they'll grow on you, because that's how My Chemical Romance songs work.