In honor of the record’s 15th anniversary, My Chemical Romance have reissued their fourth and final studio album, ‘Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys,’ on vinyl and streaming platforms. Its neon-drenched comic-book mythology and defiant lust for life still stand as one of the band’s boldest acts of reinvention, while its once-futuristic dystopia looks more recognizable than ever.

Stream: ‘Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Deluxe)’ – My Chemical Romance

After the release of The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance stood at an impossible crossroads.

Seeking to break free from the turmoil that surrounded them inside the Paramour Mansion during the record’s recording, yet reaping the rewards of the body of work that resulted, they knew one truth was imminent: they needed to turn the dials down for the health of the band, and fast.

Guitarist Frank Iero described their troubles at the time to be the product of overtouring. “It was such a heavy time. We were just in this capsule at times, [in] a new city every day,” he said. “I think there was a hatred for what we had created, because of what it made us have to do and what it put us through.” Their identity was tied up in The Black Parade’s darkness, but, as frontman Gerard Way would reveal, its messaging was misinterpreted. “You started to resent the project. You’re like ‘F***, I hate answering questions about this dark shit.”

The Black Parade had hardened them. The record they made (and almost released) next, Conventional Weapons, was written with a disdain for their own bravery. “The first attempt at the record was fighting against the ambition of the band and the Black Parade,” Way said at the time. “Danger Days ended up being the reaction to the boring rock record – and I hate throwing around words like boring, [because] it’s a great album and everyone worked really hard on it. But it’s a reaction to that… I think survival instincts kicked in and said basically, ‘If I don’t evolve, I’m not going to survive.’ It was that very thing: we had to evolve or there was no survival.”

Understanding that Conventional Weapons would be an album released in haste, they scrapped the release and got to work on a record based around a comic Way had been working on instead. Ultimately, it was a matter of protecting their identity at large. “I remember someone saying to me at one point: ‘Don’t grow up now. You have your whole life to grow up,” Way said. “Don’t be that band. You guys aren’t that band.”

It was at that point that characters Way was workshopping became the band’s new alter egos heading into Danger Days’ development. Each member took on a new name – Way as Party Poison, guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro as Fun Ghoul and Jet Star respectively, and bassist Mikey Way as Kobra Kid. They traded their marching band outfits for neon leather jackets and ray guns, and finally, aided by a final stake in the heart of The Black Parade, came back to life as the Fabulous Killjoys.

“There’s just so much in the front end of this record,” Way said of Danger Days.

To avoid thematic misinterpretation, he stamped each song with unique lyrics, almost like identifiable barcodes. “They had to be bold statements, like slogans. They had to mean something important, and that had to happen constantly throughout the album. So it goes from ‘Girl, you gotta be what tomorrow needs,’ to, ‘Fame is now injectable,’ [to] ‘Faith is unavailable.”

The record’s accompanying comic centers around the Killjoys as they battle it out against a malevolent government agency called BL/ind (Better Living Industries). Unlike the New Jersey influence that threaded their first three albums, Danger Days was uniquely Californian, taking place in the then-futuristic year of 2019 in a post-apocalyptic desert town. Multiple members had moved to the Golden State by this time, proving a major change of scenery both personally and for the band’s music from there on.

Danger Days opens with a radio broadcast to the Zones in the record’s opening track, “Look Alive, Sunshine.” The first character we meet is Dr. Death Defying, who offers an A Clockwork Orange-inspired monologue that transitions into the loud, unrelenting guitar intro of lead single “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na).” It rings out like a tornado warning as we become acquainted with our new cast of Californian personalities. In the music video, even the band is transformed, with Way’s hair long and bright red to contrast the blonde buzz he’d rocked during The Black Parade.

Four Aces Movie Ranch in Palmdale serves as the music video’s main setting. Interestingly, the Murder magazine Mikey can be seen reading in the gas station sequence is the same issue Gerard went on to read during a stop along their current Long Live The Black Parade tour. It begs a worthwhile question – are the two storylines related, even if just in theme? Certainly, a key takeaway from both is that knowledge and art are the most viable weapons against tyranny.

Key characters featured in the “Na Na Na” video include Korse, BL/ind’s head hitman played by Grant Morrison, and The Girl, a female protagonist played by Grace Jeanette. As the Killjoys avoid Korse’s brutality and fight to save The Girl from a similar fate, we eventually see that The Girl has been kidnapped in an effort to lure the boys to a BL/ind facility. This is where they meet their untimely deaths in the “SING” video.

Drugs, gimme drugs, gimme drugs
I don’t need it, but I’ll sell what you got
Take the cash and I’ll keep it
Eight legs to the wall
Hit the gas, kill ’em all
And we crawl, and we crawl, and we crawl
You be my detonator

– “Na Na Na,” My Chemical Romance

“Oh, let me tell you ’bout the sad man,” Way sneers, “Shut up and let me see your jazz hands.” More than anything, these lyrics feel like a joking goodbye to his former self, and a refutation of the version of himself cemented by the press. Nonsensical lines about gas cans, bullet shells, and plastic surgery follow, all conglomerating to paint a vivid picture of conformity and rebelling against it.

“Bulletproof Heart” follows, and its sparkling riffs carry Way as he slips in a reference to Killers’ 2004 track “Jenny Was A Friend of Mine.” Way picks up the story where Brandon Flowers left it, pleading, “Jenny, won’t you come back home? / Cause everybody knows you don’t ever wanna come back / Let me be the one to save you.” This gang of runaways grows when Way switches the lyric to ask “Johnny” to come back home. Some speculate this to be a reference to Johnny Cade from The Outsiders, who runs away from home after killing a man.

While death and detonation underpin Danger Days, what keeps it afloat is the promise of better days ahead. “SING” is built on a beat the band mediated on for several days, and its bridge builds to a deeply satisfying crescendo during which Way lists off a series of threats to the health of our society. “Cleaned up, corporation progress / Dying in the process, children that can talk about it / Living on the webways, people moving sideways / Sell it ’til your last days, buy yourself the motivation.”

Generation nothing,
nothing but a dead scene
Product of a white dream,
I am not the singer that you wanted
But a dancer, I refuse to answer
Talk about the past, sir,
wrote it for the ones who want to get away
Keep running

– “SING,” My Chemical Romance

At its core, Danger Days explores the cost of writing humanity off as collateral damage in the pursuit of progress.

Way warns against children “living on the webways,” a concept that would come to pass in a greater way than was imaginable, even with the technological advances reached by 2010. What’s “dying in the process” is our social and emotional muscles, our ability to relate to one another. This theme carries through to “Planetary (GO!),” the record’s next song.

“This core is critical,” Way sings, as if speaking of our core values as a society being liable to melt like the core of a nuclear power plant. Mikey’s bass thumps erratically below, jumping from low and high notes like an EKG detecting irregular heart rhythms. The song feels anxious as a result, as Way declares that his “word is the Beretta.” Beretta, the Italian gun manufacturer, acted as inspiration for the band’s logo during this era – more broadly, weaponry would be used as a lyrical centerpiece.

Are we still having fun?
Are you holding the gun?
(Take me home), take the money and run
We’ll never go home
(Can we go?) I’ve got nothing to lose
You’ve got nothing to say
(And leave home), and we’re leaving today
We’ll never go home

– “Planetary (GO!),” My Chemical Romance

“The Only Hope For Me Is You” is often overlooked, as it’s sandwiched between shinier offerings in the middle of the record. But as a power ballad, it holds steady and provides momentum to carry the band through to “Jet-Star and the Kobra Kid / Traffic Report,” the next interlude from Dr. Death Defying. He updates that Jet Star and Kobra Kid have “got themselves ghosted,” and urges us “tumbleweeds” to keep our boots tight and our gun close.

With only two members canonically alive by this point, Way’s character comes to the forefront in the form of “Party Poison.” He pays homage to Iggy Pop’s “Search and Destroy” by calling himself a “streetwalking cheetah with a capital G,” and tries to bring the mood back up as BL/ind closes in. The track culminates in an explosive ending, with the sounds of metal and glass strewn about as the rhythm pulses, then falls apart.

“Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back” takes a different approach. It opens with guitar that resembles a car spinning out on an open desert road, as the remaining Killjoys workshop how to get out of BL/ind’s oppressive grasp alive. “I hope you’re ready for a firefight / ‘Cause the devil’s got your number tonight,” Way warns, preparing for a standoff but ensuring “this ain’t a room full of suicides / We’re believers / I believe tonight.”

What follows is another lesser-heard track, “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W.” The “scarecrows” in question are high level BL/ind assassins, but the song speaks more generally to the threat of nuclear annihilation, and learning to find peace and safety in chaos. The album’s sonics shift here, moving hazily towards late-60’s psychedelia to mirror the mental unraveling the Killjoys undergo. Even the drums begin to suffer from auditory heat exhaustion. They stumble in as Way’s falsettos crawl alongside them.

“Heat burns my skin / Never mind about the shape I’m in / I’ll keep you safe tonight,” he sings, mustering enough energy to scream his way into the chorus with a simple demand: “Shut up and run with me.” I’ve always found this to be one of the single most poignant moments of all of Danger Days. “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W” is about the protection of innocence, and the second wind of conviction granted to you in times of survival. “Run, run, bunny, run,” he continues, speaking further to this purity and goodness amidst the bedlam around Battery City.

Blow a kiss at the methane skies
See the rust through your playground eyes
We’re all in love tonight (all in love tonight)
Leave a dream where the fallout lies
Watch it grow where the tear stain dries
To keep you safe tonight

– “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W,” My Chemical Romance

“Summertime” continues in this vein of innocence and youth. Written for Gerard’s wife, Lyn-Z, the track is commonly praised for its glittering riffs and straightforwardness lyrically. Where their love songs are typically veiled by historical allegory or darkened by death, “Summertime” is all light. It’s a precious moment of calm in the eye of the Danger Days hurricane.

While Way warns that “love won’t stop this bomb” in the song prior, he now floats the idea, maybe naively, of running away from Battery City and the Zones altogether and starting life anew. Nothing punctuates that hope more than the opening lines: “When the lights go out / Will you take me with you?”

Here, Danger Days becomes both a concept album with a unique cast of characters, and a brilliant ode to life and love. Whether Way’s asking to be let into the subject’s innermost thoughts, the place where the “lights go out,” or more literally asking to be swept away to someplace better when things go south, the song is stacked with some of the record’s most beautiful, intimate imagery.

Terrified of what I’d be
As a kid, from what I’ve seen
Every single day, when people try and
Put the pieces back
Together just to smash them down
Turn my headphones up, real loud
I don’t think I need them, now
‘Cause you stop the noise

And if you stay, I would even wait all night
Or until my heart explodes, how long until we
Find our way in the dark and out of harm?
You can run away with me anytime you want

– “Summertime,” My Chemical Romance

“DESTROYA” follows, an epic battle cry that turns the volume and heat back up as the Killjoys fight once more against BL/ind’s dictatorship, before Mikey’s bass kickstarts “The Kids From Yesterday.” This track acts as the unofficial end of the record. While the songs and comic follow different storylines, the comic taking place after the events of the album, there’s still a general understanding here that all four Killjoys have been killed by Korse and his gang. They’re in body bags at the end of the “SING” video, having saved The Girl from BL/ind byway of a gunfight and losing their lives in the process.

“The Kids From Yesterday” offers a more hopeful tone, as Way sings that “you only live forever in the lights you make.” But it also highlights topics like government surveillance, addiction, and the impossible standards we hold ourselves to in the name of beauty. Again, Way finds solace in the simplicity of a post-nuclear blast afterlife: “I’ll find you when the sun goes black.” We’ve reached the end of the world just in time for Dr. Death Defying to sign us off with “Goodnite, Dr. Death.”

All the cameras watch the
accidents and stars you hate
They only care if you can bleed
Does the television make
you feel the pills you ate
Or every person that you need to be?

‘Cause you only live forever
in the lights you make
When we were young, we used to say
That you only hear the music
when your heart begins to break
Now we are the kids from yesterday

 – “The Kids From Yesterday,” My Chemical Romance

Like at the end of a late-night television broadcast, the track ends with a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then cuts to distortion to signal the finality of the report. It’s only “Vampire Money” that follows, which serves as the record’s upbeat end credits. And with that, Danger Days is complete, having taken us through a rollercoaster ride of a story centering around the survival and eventual demise of the Killjoys as they rebel against BL/ind.

Ultimately, we learn that neither the Killjoys nor BL/ind are the “bad guys,” and both end the record having done “some pretty messed up things,” as Way puts it. But, despite the destruction inflicted by both sides of the story, Danger Days never loses its lust for life. “It’s a celebratory record,” Iero said at the time. “You’re hearing a band that’s having fun and being creative. So it’s a lighthearted album in that way. It was so difficult at first and we were just beating ourselves up wondering, ‘Why isn’t this working?’ So by the time we were on a roll, we were just in love with what we were doing.”

How is freedom gained, and what moral standards are worth relaxing in search of it? These two questions are left as topics of discussion for fans when the record finds its end.

To me, that’s the enduring beauty of Danger Days – it’s a record that lets go and asks you to draw your own conclusions. By placing us in a world where “faith is unavailable,” Danger Days teaches us to find it within. As for reactions from the press, the band learned to relinquish control of that, too.

“The aftermath really has to be a secondary thing that I can’t give a shit about. I think that’s kept the art pure,” Way said in 2010. “I think that’s why it’s so vibrant and ‘f*** you’ and awesome and fearless, and the music sounds just like it looks, and the visual promises you so much danger and excitement, and the record delivers that. I think that doesn’t happen very often.”

Now, with the band having just released a deluxe edition of the album for its 15th anniversary, that message rings truer than ever. We’re past the then-futuristic year of 2019 by a longshot, but Danger Days still feels like a story set in the distant future. For all we know, the Killjoys are still rolling along like tumbleweeds beneath the sweltering Mojave sun. Somewhere in the Zones, a car’s speeding on by, with “Na Na Na” ringing out like an omnipresent rebel song.

Just like the Joshua trees lining the roads they’re winding down, the Killjoys will never truly die. Not in spirit. Their shadows are cast along highways, their slogans plastered on the bathroom walls of roadside diners. And if you listen closely, you can hear them every time you dare to let the heat slow you down: “Run, run, bunny, run.”

Alright, children
The lights are out and the party’s over
It’s time for me, Doctor D, to start running
And say goodbye for a little while
And I know you’re going to miss me,
so I’ll leave you with this

You know that big ball of
radiation we call the sun?
Well, it’ll burst you into flames
if you stay in one place too long
That is, if the static don’t get you first
So remember, even if you’re
dusted, you may be gone
But out here in the desert
your shadow lives on without you
This is Dr. Death Defying, signing off

– “Goodnite, Dr. Death,” My Chemical Romance 

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 © Neil Krug

Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

an album by My Chemical Romance