Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

My Chemical Romance took a very long pause to make a very special album

My Chemical Romance have taught the audience to take releases of their albums as big events widely and hotly discussed. Before delivering their long player number four, the band fell into silence for four years, long four years during which ordinary listeners and critics of all kinds and views first praised their third album, The Black Parade (2006), and then went on to guess and assume what there would be on the new CD from the American ensemble. As if involved in a global plot with other performers who have lately been fond of giving long titles to their albums, My Chemical Romance christened their fresh long player with a name they must have thought of for two of these four years. The new album of the established punk-rockers is called Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys. This does look intriguing and seems like a welcoming sign into a long interesting story. This is the way it should be, because the band’s fans will not be content with anything simpler. Finally, since My Chemical Romance took such a long break making their fourth record, we may suppose that they did not plan to make another The Black Parade. And they did have different plans.

Danger Days is a fancy journey

Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys proved to be an amazingly speedy, dynamic album without a single boring track and giving you no second to recover your breath. Rest comes along only after listening to the entire record, but will you want to take a break after that? The CD can be compared with an amusement ride when you get into a vehicle transported from a science fiction movie and head for an undiscovered area with your jaw hanging low out of surprise. Even the intro here is very slow as if telling you that there is no time to get ready. The launch of the vehicle is conducted to the single Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) with intense guitars and galloping bass. The chorus based on the repetition of one and the same syllable might remind you of a kindergarten walk-around, but it certainly supplies good mood, which is an integral part of a good journey. After this pretty lively start you should not relax being disillusioned by the quiet intro of Bulletproof Heart: My Chemical Romance will soon shift to loud rock-n-roll once again. Then you better get ready for surprises in the form of two slogan-songs, Sing, and Planetary (GO!). Still playing guitars, the band brings in a layer of electronic music. Those fighting for the purity of guitar music will probably dislike this idea, but the reality is that both tracks are really funny and pleasant dance numbers.

More electronica means more emotions

The description of the other ten songs from Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys does not make any sense because you have to hear them yourself. But we have to admit that the band continued experiments with electronic music to the end of the record. We all know that My Chemical Romance have always flavored their guitars, bass and drums something else. But this time electronic music is not just something else; it is as important as the classic rock music instruments. Should there been no synthesizers this music would definitely lose a great part of its attraction, no matter what songs we are talking about. Whether this is the ballad Summertime or the rock-n-roll anthem Party Poison, the samples play a great part in forming up the atmosphere and building the rhythmic structures. The vocals are not the same too. After the dark and dramatic The Black Parade, Way cracks ironical jokes from time to time and relies on nonchalant manner of narration. This we can see that My Chemical Romance are like a human being, they grow and develop going through different stages of their lives and experiencing various sensations. Skillfully constructed out of several instrumental layers, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, yet always emotional, Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys is an album with a great harmony of music, singing and words.