Re-Review: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge - My Chemical Romance

Recommended

Preface:

It's been three years since my original review of this album came out, and while I stand by the some of the points I made in the original review, I don't think the original review was very well articulated and sort of went off the rails in its last few paragraphs. Granted, it was my first year of writing reviews for music period at the time that it was written, so I guess I should cut myself a bit of slack. Regardless, I wanted to re-review this album with a bit more review writing experience under my belt to better reflect my thoughts on one of my favorite albums. Enjoy.

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Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is the second album by American rock band My Chemical Romance. It follows their more raw, roughly produced debut I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love and is also their major label debut.

My Chemical Romance reprises the aggressive, fast-paced, and emotional nature of their debut but takes a more polished approach to it on this album, with better mixing, a more refined sound, and a more cohesive feel in general.

It opens strongly with the highly memorable, tone-setting "Helena", a tribute to vocalist Gerard Way and bassist Mikey Way's late grandmother. It starts with Gerard softly singing the opening lines, backed by a minimalistic instrumental before the band explodes into action with energetic drumming and guitars that get completely stuck in your head. It's probably one of my favorite openers to any album period.

"Give 'Em Hell Kid" leans a little into traditional punk territory, making use of a distortion effect on Gerard's vocals and having guitars with more raw tonalities thrown into the mix.

"I'm Not Okay (I Promise)", although the weakest track on the album, is still a fun and catchy track with lyrics that are admittedly a little hard to take completely seriously ("I'm not o-fucking kay!"), but they work well enough in the context of the track.

"The Ghost of You" starts slowly and builds in intensity as the track goes along, culminating in a dramatic ending that leads seamlessly into "The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You". Everything about it - the structure of the song, the atmosphere, and its cinematic feel - makes it one of the strongest moments on the album.

"Hang 'Em High" conceptually shouldn't work but definitely does. It's a thematic and instrumental homage to wild west movies, beginning with a whistled melody that could honestly open a country song before a wall of screamed vocals comes in and starts the track proper. Definitely a fun moment on the album.

The album culminates with "I Never Told You What I Do for a Living", which features the oddly catchy chorus of:

"Another knife in my hands a stain that never comes off the sheets / Clean me off, I'm so dirty babe / It ain't the money and it sure as hell ain't just for the fame / It's for the bodies I claim and those"

And my favorite vocal moment on the album, where Gerard screams out "I tried, I tried!" with incredible intensity at song's intense breakdown. Everything leads up to this one moment perfectly and I couldn't imagine a better way to the end this album.

My favorite tracks from the album are hard to narrow down for sure but "It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish", "Thank You for the Venom", and "You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison" are great stand out tracks from the album.

Overall, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge marked the point in My Chemical Romance's catalogue where their sound became more polished and refined, no longer restrained by limited production budget (like on Bullets) and allowed to reach its full potential. It's no wonder then that the album has become and will remain one of the most loved albums of the 2000s in the alternative music space and beyond.