Conventional Weapons: The story of My Chemical Romance’s final studio compilation, and subsequent break-up

The origins of My Chemical Romance’s final collection of songs can be traced back further than the notorious scrapped Danger Days… sessions. Their cover of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row, recorded for the soundtrack of 2009 superhero film Watchmen, was – like the music they were seeking to create at the time – a raw, rabid, back-to-basics punk song. It had none of the frills that characterised their previous output, just pure aggression delivered in typically anthemic MCR fashion. After the intensity of The Black Parade, it was a welcome change of pace for its creators.

Shortly after recording Desolation Row, the band began work on the abandoned album written preceding Danger Days…. The material they wrote during these sessions was simpler and far less dramatic, but once the band came to the conclusion that they were headed down the wrong path, the majority of it was shelved. Only four tracks from this period – Bulletproof Heart, The Only Hope For Me Is You, Party Poison and Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back – made it onto Danger Days… in reworked form, and none were chosen as proper singles. Neither the band nor producer Brendan O’Brien considered what they had to be a cohesive album, and so it looked like the songs would be lost forever.

Fast-forward to 2012, though, and with My Chemical Romance winding down the Danger Days… campaign, thoughts turned to their next move. A space in Los Angeles was rented out in order to serve as a base of operations, with long-time touring keyboardist James Dewees, drummer Jarrod Alexander and engineer Doug McKean all on hand to realise the band’s next vision. The problem they were having, however, was that no-one in My Chemical Romance really knew what that next step was going to be.

Come the autumn, and following a band meeting, it was agreed that, under the banner of Conventional Weapons, MCR would release two songs a month between October 2012 and February 2013 from the pre-Danger Days… sessions. The MCRmy were clamouring to hear the tracks, and the band were happy to oblige. Not only had they concluded that the songs were perhaps good enough to be released after all, but the Conventional Weapons reveal would grant them a period out of the spotlight which would, theoretically, allow more time to figure out what might come next.

The 10 songs that make up Conventional Weapons include some of the band’s best work. The anarchic emo-punk of Boy Division stood out most for its sheer ferocity, with Gerard delivering some typically violent lyrics: ‘I bought my enemies ropes to hang me and the knives to gang me / You can watch them stab me on your television.’ Surrender The Night and Burn Bright, the final pair of tracks to be released, were similarly brilliant, bathed in the mix of darkness and hope that MCR became so associated with. It’s fitting that the final words Gerard sings on the Conventional Weapons collection are Burn Bright’s ‘It makes me who I am’ closing line. Even when My Chemical Romance were operating at less than full power, their lyrics retained that sense of inner-strength and self-empowerment that fans responded to so strongly.

The music of Conventional Weapons does, however, also showcase the problems MCR were having at the time the songs were recorded. Following The Black Parade, they’d agreed on what their next album shouldn’t be, but didn’t have a clear vision of what it would ultimately turn into, which is probably why, when played in full, Conventional Weapons is somewhat disjointed compared to the band’s other records. There aren’t any duff songs on display, but the larger-than-life power-pop stomp of Gun. sounds at odds with the mature rock balladry of The World Is Ugly and The Light Behind Your Eyes. Listening to The Black Parade and Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, there is a sense that these were records where the band had delved into the heart and soul of each and every song, and it wasn’t that the material on Conventional Weapons was lacking that heart, but the tracks didn’t feel like they’d been created with a grand purpose or endgame in mind.

Prior to the Conventional Weapons release period drawing to a close, My Chemical Romance had, unbeknownst to the rest of the rock world and even themselves at the time, played their final show before splitting up. It took place in the band’s home state of New Jersey, at the Bamboozle Festival in Asbury Park on May 19, 2012. In a heartbreaking TwitLonger post a year later, Gerard would describe looking out at the ocean from the stage, in awe of its vastness and the vibrant sky above. Hyperaware of his surroundings, he recalled how he felt like he was “acting” during the show, which was something he had never done before. It was a bad sign, and deep down, he knew in that moment that My Chemical Romance was done, but it would take a further 10 months for the band to finally admit that, for the time being, they’d reached the end of the road.

Before the break-up announcement on March 22, 2013, My Chem had been working on a fifth album. It had a working title of The Paper Kingdom, and conceptually centred around the story of a support group made up of parents whose children had died. Unsurprisingly, those present at the sessions described it as the darkest music My Chemical Romance had ever written, with comparisons drawn to experimental alt-rockers Radiohead. A bleak shadow had been cast over the band, and they were making music that, according to Gerard’s close friend and comic book writer Grant Morrison, didn’t sound anything like the MCR we know and love.

When the time came, it took My Chemical Romance less than 100 words to announce their demise. There was no farewell tour, no grand finale, and no long or laboured goodbye. Fans were left upset – angry, even – at how, after 12 years, things had come to such an abrupt end. Gerard penned an abstract, but more detailed explanation behind the split a few days later. Titled A Vigil, On Birds And Glass, it was an emotional and honest farewell that spoke to the heart of every person ever to be moved by this most special of bands.

“My Chemical Romance is done. But it can never die,” he wrote. “It is alive in me, in the guys, and it is alive inside all of you. I always knew that, and I think you did too. Because it is not a band – it is an idea.”

And what an idea it was.

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